Larry Dorman, spokesman for AFSCME Council 4, which represents five city unions with over 1,500 workers, disagreed with New Haven Mayor John DeStefano’s call for changing state rules on binding arbitration. Following is a statement he issued on the subject. (Read about DeStefano’s call here.)
“Mayor DeStefano’s complaining about New Haven’s public workers is tiresome, disingenuous, and just plain wrong. New Haven city workers did not create the economic crisis and he knows that.
“This longest-serving mayor knows surprisingly little about binding arbitration. Police and fire unions are not under a different law. The mayor’s claim that arbitrators ‘split the baby’ because both parties must agree to his or her appointment is utterly false and insulting. In fact, a 2006 report by the Legislative Program Review and Investigation Committee found that “arbitrators accepted 62 percent of managements’ proposals and 38 percent of labors’ proposals.”
“Obviously it’s preferable to settle negotiations in a just and reasonable way. But the mayor’s complaint about the custodial union negotiations rings hollow. Our school custodial union can, and has, agreed to many changes in work rules and economics, but these workers are not about to agree to see their jobs destroyed completely. At the Mayor’s direction, the city has forced negotiations into arbitration. He should not cry foul after the fact.
“Mayor DeStefano is right, however, when he says that state support to the PILOT (Payments in Lieu of Taxes) should not be cut, but that doesn’t go far enough: PILOT should be fully supported by the state (100%). But he should not waste time on gimmicks like increased traffic enforcement to raise revenue. Traffic laws are designed to protect people, not to raise revenue.
“If Mr. DeStefano had spent more time fighting for equity and less time grandstanding, we might have seen real changes in tax equity. A little more
truthfulness in the need for adequate funding to run the city may have paid off in real substantial repairs to Connecticut’s regressive and inequitable property tax.
“Instead, the Mayor is bogging the city down in needless battles, legislative and otherwise, when he should be providing responsible leadership. Absent that leadership, New Haven will continue to founder.”