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In our view: Reduce Pay, Benefits

Painful but logical solution must emerge as governments tackle budget challenges

The Columbian
Published: July 14, 2010, 12:00am

The city of Vancouver should be in the business of trying to save critical jobs, but the only real way to do that is to reduce pay and benefits for those who work there. Cutting jobs saves money, but city residents lose service. Cutting pay and benefits also saves money, but city residents don’t lose services. Also, it’s easy to say we should protect police and firefighters, but when the bulk of the payroll rests in those two areas, it’s easier said than done. That’s why it’s so important to get payroll in line by being more realistic in what the city can afford to pay governmental workers.

As Andrea Damewood reported in Tuesday’s Columbian, city officials are considering 105 layoffs at the end of the year, even in public safety departments. Fifteen filled and three vacant firefighter positions could be cut, and at least 11 police positions will be eliminated. To their credit, City Manager Pat McDonnell and his budget writers have turned desperately to a vast array of cost-cutting measures. More than 30 jobs are gone from parks and other departments that make Vancouver “healthy and sustainable.” Recreation center hours have been reduced and fees increased. More than 20 positions will be chopped from human resources, information technology and other support services.

These figures describe only part of an ongoing struggle that predates the Great Recession. Since 2000, Vancouver has trimmed about 133 positions. The city has almost 50 fewer employees than in 1998. If firefighter and police jobs are lost later this year, it will mark the first time since at least World War II that filled public safety positions will be eliminated, according to Damewood’s story.

But as stated in this editorial’s first paragraph, cutting jobs is not the best solution. More attention should be paid by city officials to the solution that private-sector companies (even more frantic than public sector entities) have been forced to adopt: less pay and fewer benefits. Ask a firefighter, police officer or any other city worker: Would you rather lose your job or keep it with less pay and fewer benefits? We suspect he or she will choose the second option.

Why should government workers essentially be immune to many of the sacrifices demanded by the Great Recession? That’s the first question that McDonnell and his associates should ask at the union contract negotiations table. Damewood reported that the city will reopen bargaining with unions in hopes of reducing health-care costs by $1.1 million. That would save 11 to 16 full-time workers. As mentioned, that’s preferable to putting people out of work, and it would help sustain some city services.

The city has held tough in a few negotiating arenas. There have been no new cost-of-living increases for city workers, and a hiring freeze is in effect. But those should not be considered bragging points; they should have been considered automatic, as they are in the private sector.

City officials point to a survey of 2,000 residents that showed strong support for fire and police departments, but also support for other departments. That’s their logic for proposed cuts in public-safety jobs. But instead of cutting jobs, union workers should be made to pay more of their individual health benefit costs, a sacrifice already imposed upon the city’s management and nonunion workers. As it stands now, the city’s costs for the primary retirement system is expected to almost double in about three years. More than unsustainable, that’s simply intolerable and unfair to taxpayers.

Fewer workers is not the best answer. And we agree with city officials who complain that city services already have been cut to the bone. The logical solution, one that’s been available all along, is lower pay and benefits … for those city workers who are fortunate enough to still have their jobs.

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