If any of you attended Tuesday night's joint School Committee/Council meeting you would have heard certain Council members challenge the School Committee to begin negotiating healthcare co-payments from their nonunion employees, i.e., management just as the city is allegedly doing.  I believe the school department has been requiring a 3% co-pay of its management for some time now while on the municipal side, only the city manager has a co-payment requirement. Their argument is you have to start the process somewhere.  That's true but let's have the city arrive at its number first to challenge the School Department. Does the city expect to get a 3% co-payment from managers while the School Department is asked to go to say 6%? By the way, even 6% of a $14,000 family policy is only $840.

Historically, city management has used the union contract gains as bargaining leverage for themselves. How will this circular reasoning work in the future? In the wacky world of government cIty and school union employees get annual raises regardless of performance. Last year's official inflation rate was 1.6%; therefore the annual 3.5% raises our union employees are getting more than offsets the co-payment requirement and still leaves most employees ahead of inflation. Step increases will also allow some employees to circumvent the impact of co-payment increases. I suspect, however, that most city and school employees are already at the highest step for their pay grade.

The Mayor also asked the city manager to consider the budget impact of various percentage salary increases for those non-union employees. Since they are non-union why can't they be rewarded on the basis of performance if we had a performance measurement system which we don't?  So how will the non-union employees be compensated ?  Will we hear the rhetoric of higher co-pay while they receive across-the-board compensating raises?

Councilor O'Neill, in his typically imperious tone, suggested that healthcare buybacks are also an issue. They definitely are. I believe he cited the state having a buyback of $2,200, presumably as a benchmark comparison for the city. There should be no buybacks period, state or city. It was a bad fiscal policy when it began and it is a bad policy compounded today. You would be hard pressed to find many private companies who offer buybacks.  Councilor O'Neill's wife is a Newport teacher. Is one of them receiving a buyback? How about Councilor Bacarri whose wife is the Mayor's secretary?

The Council had a chance to demonstrate their backbone with the fire personnel contract that was just renewed. It was renewed with a three year annual 3.5% pay increase and no co-payments. The police contract is being negotiated now. If I was a member of the police union I would have a little difficulty being conciliatory on those issues after my brothers and sisters in the fire department got their great deal. Who are the councilors kidding?

Two of our councilors work for state government and their union  (or are they exempt?)  is not exactly enthusiastic with support for Governor Carcieri's recommended co-pay increase and additional employee retirement contributions. Will there be a public website or publication where every state government employee's vote on those union issues can be viewed? Wouldn't that be interesting? At least their salaries are public.