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Hundreds of cops were protesting outside his door. Inside, union brass urged him to declare a two-month time-out. Mayor John DeStefano thought about the faces he’d seen on TV of cops about to lose their jobs. He thought: “This is tempting.”
DeStefano (pictured addressing the press Thursday) faced a decision at that moment that could define how he moves forward in tackling a once-in-a-generation city budget crisis.
The moment also crystallized the passing of an era — of a half-century-plus-old bargain between Democratic elected officials and municipal union leaders, a bargain that has suddenly dissolved in city halls and statehouses from New York to California.
The moment took place mid-day Thursday in DeStefano’s office overlooking the Green. His administration was in the process of informing 82 government workers that they would lose their jobs to help the city close a $5.5 million budget gap in the fiscal year ending June 30. It was but round one in what will certainly be a series of layoffs as the city confronts another budget gap, projected at over $20 million, for the next fiscal year. The 82 included 16 cops, the first officers to be laid off in at least four decades. And his longstanding allies in blue were in revolt.
DeStefano recalled the moment during an interview in the same office later on Thursday. It was the end of a day of taking heat from crowds convinced he had acted heartlessly, then facing the press and the public at a news conference interrupted by an angry union leader. In a subdued manner, he spoke of how, as the son of a cop, he wrestled with conflicting emotions as he decided whether to grab at one last chance to avoid layoffs for men and women who put their lives on their line to protect the city.
DeStefano’s administration had lost control of the story as news of the layoffs unfolded. The night before, a raucous police union meeting featured pained young cops backed by cheering throngs of fellow officers — captured on the TV news. Thursday morning 200 cops accompanied the 16 to the chief’s office as they were slated to hand in their badges and guns. The show of support led to a delay. The 200 then led a siren-backed march to City Hall to confront the mayor.
The mayor and police union brass have negotiated for months. But this show of emotion and support granted union officials one more audience with the mayor — the kind of 11th-hour throwdown that has traditionally produced a peace pact or at least bought time.
They suggested that the mayor give the 16 cops two more months for the two sides to try again come up with the money to save their jobs.
“I saw the officers on TV last night and this morning. I saw them as people in uniform working hard to support their families. I understood that I am making chaos for these people” and their families, DeStefano recalled thinking. “Of course I want to fix this!”
He thought about how he’s known the union officials at the table over his 17 years as mayor. He delivered contracts they liked, and they got reelected to their union posts. They backed DeStefano’s runs for office, including his 2006 run for governor.
Then DeStefano thought about a five-hour meeting he held with AFSCME officials Saturday about other city workers facing layoffs. He had eventually walked out of that meeting, concluding that union officials weren’t serious about making fundamental changes to pension and health care plans. One negotiator told him the city has a “revenue problem.” DeStefano has concluded that New Haven has a “spending problem” and structural benefits problem. Like cities and states across the country, New Haven can no longer afford plans that have far more generous conditions than private-sector plans, that it can no longer raise the money from its tax-whacked homeowners, he concluded. City pension funds will run out of money this decade without major changes, he said. (The Police and Fire Retirement Fund has lost $36 million since June 2008 and is just 52 percent funded.)
He thought about his continuing talks with the police union seeking new rules that would have pensions calculated based on salaries alone, rather than salaries plus overtime; that reduce cost-of-living increases; that put financial incentives like more co-pays into health plans to encourage workers to limit costs; that make cops wait, say, 25 years before retiring, rather than 20 or less. He felt he was getting nowhere.
“It is not for lack of talking,” he concluded. “I don’t know how to reach them. The choices don’t exist anymore. We’ve been around and around on this. They just don’t get it. I don’t know how to make them get it.”
Police union officials said Thursday that the rank and file has offered to put in volunteer days, give up vacations, take pay cuts — whatever will help save the jobs. DeStefano responded that without more fundamental pension and health reforms, those one-time savings will only delay the inevitable. (Click on the play arrow and on this story to hear the police union side in more depth.)
As he heard out the union, DeStefano thought about “my responsibilities to the 82” city workers getting laid off, he said — as well as “my responsibility to the 125,000 people that live here.” Sure, he could buy two more months by returning to the table.
“I could have kicked the can down the road this [fiscal] year,” he concluded, “but I would have left a bigger problem for everybody next year. It would have been that much harder to fix this thing,” he said. “It’s got to be reset. It’s the moment. It’s the time. We can do it with less pain than they think.”
And DeStefano thought about his father, a career New Haven cop. DeStefano used to hang a photo of his father by his office’s public entrance. It showed his father in uniform, on a picket line.
“I come from one of those families,” he said of the laid-off cops. “My father died at 57. He still had his badge. He wasn’t thinking of retiring.”
The idea of being able to retire from the police force in your 40s and starting a second career is a modern phenomenon, he said, a result of generous pacts struck by elected officials and public-sector unions across the country in the latter part of the 20th century. He was one of those officials, he acknowledged. He struck those deals. He benefited from those deals. He can no longer strike those deals, DeStefano said. It was time, in his view, to accept the realities of a new era, in which governments cannot afford them.
He told his former negotiating partners from the police union: No deal.
The union officials returned to Church Street. “He wants to start a war with the police union,” union President Louis Cavaliere told fired-up supporters.
A historic bargain was dead. The fight was on.