Miami-Dade Mayor Gimenez plans to veto commission moves in bid to avert police layoffs

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez said Friday he plans to veto the county commission?s decisions Thursday not to impose labor concessions on county unions, but added he will still move ahead and send out the first wave of pink slips to county employees on Friday Jan. 13.

The mayor?s move will force the board at its next meeting on Jan. 24 to reconsider controversial votes that he says will trigger the layoffs of some 300 police and corrections officers.

The commissioners on Thursday night voted 7-6 against forcing 5,400 police and corrections officers, represented by the Dade Police Benevolent Association, to pay an additional 5 percent of pay towards health care.

The panel also refused to impose the controversial 5-percent giveback on its professionals and supervisors, who are represented by the Government Supervisors Association of Florida OPEIU Local 100. Both unions had already approved contracts that include substantial reductions in pay, but had hit an impasse on the additional 5 percent the county is counting on to balance its 2011-12 budget, which is based on a lowered property-tax rate.

?I hope that some commissioners will reconsider their votes and sustain the veto and move to implement the 5-percent health-care contributions,?? Gimenez said Friday.

Commission Chairman Joe Martinez, who has announced plans to challenge Gimenez in the mayoral race this year, took the veto news in stride. ?Pursuant to the charter, that is well within his powers,?? Martinez said. ?We?ll deal with it at the next commission meeting.??

The mayor said commissioners knew that painful employee concessions were needed when they voted in September to approve his budget plan, which reduced the property-tax rate.

Without the cost savings from those additional concessions ? which would double the employees? health-care contributions to 10 percent of their pay ? he said he will have to resort to the unprecedented law-enforcement layoffs, among other cuts.

Union leaders, who fought hard to defeat the added health-care contribution, criticized the mayor?s veto plans. ?The county and the union agreed the impasse would be resolved by the county commission, and now the mayor decides he doesn?t like the decision so he vetoes it,?? said Greg Blackman, GSAF Local 100 president.

?He didn?t win, so now he wants to kick up some dust and see if he can get his way,?? said PBA president John Rivera.

Despite the veto plan, the mayor still aims to deliver the first wave of pink slips on Friday the 13th to some employees in a scramble to close a burgeoning budget gap that totals about $35 million for the PBA and GSAF unions alone.

The mayor told his top brass to present plans Tuesday to carry out the layoffs in the least painful way.

For the police department, that likely will mean sacrificing crime-prevention efforts in favor of maintaining sufficient officers on the streets, the mayor said: ?We?re going to try to preserve essential police services as much as possible.?

In the end, the least senior employees will be let go, because of seniority and so-called bumping rights.

Officer Ryan Cowart, 28, who joined the Miami-Dade police force last year as a patrol officer in Kendall after leaving the Monroe County Sheriff?s Office for better career prospects and the chance to return home to Miami, expects he will be among the first out the door. Married with two young children, Cowart said the financial pinch of being laid off will threaten his ability to hang on to his home. ?The average time to get back in to another police job is six months,?? said Cowart, who ranks 24th from the bottom in seniority.

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/06/2577036/miami-dade-mayor-gimenez-plans.html

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