Thank you. ¶¶ The End Thank you. The End Thank you. We have a quorum. This is a special meeting of the Public Safety, Public Works Committee with one agenda item, and I believe which is collective bargaining agreements signed off by Council and I believe Councilmember Lane who called for the meeting is going to do a presentation. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Yes, in November of 2008, I suggested that it would be appropriate for the council to approve collective bargaining agreements and that was debated at some length and I think by a vote of 8 to 7, the council elected not to approve collective bargaining agreements I felt like, you know, with the budgetary issues that are at hand, it would be appropriate to readdress this issue. And I have just a little bit of information, some overhead. And I'm making a co-presentation with Doug Martin, Council Member Martin, who is going to discuss maybe some of the legal issues involved. You know, my reasoning initially for suggesting that Council should approve collective bargaining agreements because I felt like there should be a check and balance between the executive and legislative branches of our government. And then also because we are elected to represent the taxpayers, and the collective bargaining agreements are a substantial portion of our expenditures as the government. So that was another issue that was important. And then the other thing that was the fact that these agreements went for three years, they could overlap over several council members' terms as well as mayoral terms. And so agreements were made, and one mayor could impact another mayor. And then I felt, finally, that it was probably our duty under the charter to approve all expenditures and appropriations for the citizens. That being said, I put up a chart that shows that public safety budget expense has gone up from 45% of our general fund in 2002 to about 56% in 2011. And that sort of gives you an idea of the significance of the public safety expenses and out of that, of course, the collective bargaining agreement amounts to a significant portion of that expenditure. Look, can we put up the next chart number two please? Okay, this chart shows the, this would be the total cost, average cost per personnel and fire, police corrections and for the non-collective bargaining members of our government. And of course that includes things like pension funds, equipment, health care, all of the costs related to each officer. Can we go to the next slide, please? Council Member Lane, can you please tell us what you're referring to? We've just gotten two handouts provided to us today about two minutes ago, and we're having a hard time at this end of the room following in the handout where you – I see where this one is but yeah well they're only going to be five slides so we can go back is it all in the one packet or are they in both packets I don't know about one pack it may be we've gotten two separate packets there's one packet that that is my materials that looks like this councilman are crossing okay thank you because it's I mean we're we're all down here jumping around trying to find where I apologize to you thank you because I hadn't seen mr. Martin's packet either. All right, going to the next slide here, this shows the public safety pension contributions and you can see that they've grown substantially over the last six or seven years. Part of that is that there is an accrued liability for underfunding and the city has made significant contributions in year 9 and 10 but it does show that you know the benefits is a major expense of the government too. Can we go to the next slide please. This particular slide shows what the increases in the collective bargaining agreements were. In fiscal 7, you know, police, fire received a 8.3 percent increase, police 8.2 percent and corrections of 3.3 percent. And you can sort of see the trend lines on that. I believe that the overall cumulative salary percentage increase from 07 through fiscal year 11 was 31 percent for fire, 26.5 for police, and 17.6 for corrections and for non-collective bargaining 11.4%. Next chart please. Okay, that's a little bit hard to read. Can you lighten that at all? Yeah, that's a little bit better. What this is trying to represent is the yellowish, this is a green yellow color there, is the term of Mayor Teresa Isaac and the blue, the four years there represent the term of Mayor Newberry and then the last little block just represents the first term of Mayor Gray. Now my point I think of referring to this is that you can see that commitments that were made by Mayor Isaac went over into Mayor Newberry's for approximately one and a half years in both police and fire And there were more than just – there were like five agreements total that were entered into, some for officers and all that. But this is just a representative of the timeframes those agreements were entered into. Then you'll see that Mayor Newberry entered into two – well, actually several agreements, but those timeframes that were entered into were a three-year period. And they're now overlapping into the term of Mayor Gray. Those collective bargaining agreements for each department probably are in the range of $120 to $140 million for the three-year contracts for the personnel. So that is a substantial commitment by the government, and it does overlap from one council term to another and from one mayor's term to another. Here again, the fact that the council is not even involved in making approvals of this or reviewing it before it's executed, I feel is really a dereliction of the council's duty to approve all appropriations and expenses. So I just wanted to share that overhead to give you an idea of one of the problems that we have is that a mayor could make a commitment in one year and it would lap over into another mayor and obligate that mayor. Now, you know, there's always the possibility that you could have a mayor that is incompetent. I don't think we've had any of those types of mayors lately, but you could have an incompetent mayor or someone who, you know, has bad judgment or bad business sense and could enter into one of these agreements and without any overview or consent from the council. I think that's not good for our taxpayers. But that's pretty much an overview of the issue of the fact that these agreements are large, go three years, go over different terms, and that the council is not really having a consent of what these agreements are before they're signed by the mayor. So that's the first part of the presentation and I think that Mr. Martin now will talk about some of the legal points. Thank you. Councilmember Martin. Madam Chair, do you want questions now for Mr. Lane or you want me to go ahead and make my presentation so I get into it all at once? Does anybody have any questions for Councilmember Lane at this point? Okay. Thank you, Chair. And I passed out, and we have copies in the back of the room as well. But it's just some materials. It says Special Public Safety. I apologize that my name is not on it, but we are putting this together. And I'm going to walk the council through, and for folks at home, we'll start on, I guess, on page – the chart on page one of that. And again, some of this is just to supplement what Council Member Lane. This is the police and fire pension fund. And if you'll see the unfunded liability in July 1997 was about $37 million. And together with the bond debt that we've issued in order to try to shore up the pension, we're at approximately $325 million today. And while you hear folks talk about the $221, we could borrow the entire amount today and move it over from the unfunded column to the debt column, but it's still some money that we're going to have to pay. So I think it's appropriate to talk about both of them. Go ahead. The next slide. That's just the amount that we have bonded in the last couple of years. in 2009 approximately 71 million and in 2010 last year 36 million. If you could blow that up just a little bit so we can see that chart. Thank you. This is a Excuse me, Councilmember Martin. The only item on the agenda today is public safety collective bargaining agreements and this is kind of going into well I'm following up what council member Lane indicated talked about which is the the cost of public safety and how that flows from the from the if you like me to skip this information and we cannot show it to the public but I can skip over to the thing that are directly that aren't cost related to the police and fire operations but more just directly to collective bargaining is that what you like yes sir just because we just got this packet and it wasn't on the agenda well this is related to one of the one of the main reasons for collective bargaining and to have the council look at that because our extraordinary rising costs and public safety and I appreciate that I guess I'm disappointed that that you don't want the public to see this because it's like I say very very It's not that I don't want the public to see it, but this is a special meeting with one item on the agenda and so the item on the agenda is the Council approving collective bargaining. Right. So we can get this out to the public at another time, but we can't do it at this meeting. Well let me summarize and just say that that our costs are rising across the board with with public safety and I think that this is along with what councilmember Lane said was a dereliction of the council's duty our failure to discuss public safety but not only that this time but also in previous council meetings I've been on the council this is my third year and frankly we just rarely talk about public safety we rarely get into the nuts and bolts of it and and it is related to collective bargaining in our oversight duties. Moving on on page 8. And if you go to the bottom half of that and blow that up again. This is our statute that is governed by the our merged government this is a Kentucky statute and and this is the it's been brought up in the past that the council does not have the right to discuss or to debate or to approve collective bargaining and this is the statute that's quoted and it talks about the mayor signing the the agreements and things of that nature and since we're going to skip on the next item on page Page 10 is a legal opinion of our law department and Ed Gardner is here. Ed, do you mind kind of walking us through your opinion ever so briefly because I have two minutes left? We can reset the clock for your remaining time, Council Member Martin, and set the clock for Mr. Gardner. Thank you. This is a letter or a memorandum that I did at the request of Council Member Lane. As he said, there was some previous history related to this issue back in 2008 and early into 2009. And I reviewed the documents related to that and then put together a memorandum, which is I guess last month, March 24th, which kind of sets up where we are. The statute that you've identified is the critical statute here. It has the language in it that relates to the mayor's execution of the collective bargaining agreements. And when this issue came up in 2008, there was a lot of concern among the unions about the fact that their understanding was that the council was not involved in collective bargaining at all and it was between the mayor and the union. And there was even an attorney general's opinion requested at that time, which is all discussed in this memo. Basically you've got a statute that on its face says, contracts effective when the mayor signed it. There can be an argument that that says what it means what it says and that's the end of the discussion and that the council does not have any any input. However there is a precedent for this exact same statute that exists in Louisville and that has been interpreted over there to the point that the council or I guess Board of Aldermen prior maybe their council now they are involved after a contract is agreed to tentatively at the table goes to the union for approval if the union approves it then it comes to the council council reviews it and if the council is agreeable to it they authorize the mayor to sign it if they don't agree to it it goes back to the table for further negotiation if I might interject on page 18 is the statute that is identical to ours but is in fact Louisville statute and on page 20 is an ordinance from the Louisville City Council or Fiscal Court or whatever they call it over there actually approving a collective bargaining. Please continue. And I want to make it clear that the fact that Louisville does this doesn't you know it doesn't require us to do it it's not directly you know related in terms of being authority for us or making us do it one way or the other but it is significant that they've had collective bargaining for a number of years and that That is the process that they've come up with. To kind of cut to the chase, and I'll be happy to answer any questions, but to really cut to the chase, even if the language in the statute means what it says, and that is that the mayor signs the contract and it's effective, there is nothing in the statute, and the Attorney General's opinion agreed with this, that would preclude a mayor from sending the contracts to the council for review prior to their signing. So the bottom line is that it's, even if the statute means exactly what it says, and there's a discussion in here as to why maybe that's not the best reading of it because of the normal division between legislative and executive authority that's been followed in the urban county government. But again, in the interest of time and trying to cut to the chase, there is an argument that could be made that the mayor could just sign it on his own, but there's nothing that would preclude any mayor from determining, well, I'm not going to be comfortable signing this until the council looks at it. Thank you, Mr. Gardner. And we've also on page, as I indicated on page 18, the packet, we've included the ordinance from Louisville, which is frankly nearly identical to ours, and an ordinance on 20, page 20 from Louisville that also, that just shows them adopting and approving the collective bargaining. I think this on 21 is the sort of a general collective bargaining statute plot applicable to cities other types of cities of the first class I guess it is and I included a page 23 an article about at the city of Ashland that where their city council equivalent has has approved collective bargaining as well So I think there's substantial precedent. We can have a particular interpretation. I think Mr. Gardner indicated some shortcomings in the Attorney General's opinion and that is provided to the council as well. I think the takeaway from this is that the council certainly has the ability to both discuss this with the mayor but also to participate in the process. And I think giving the sheer size of this budget and the, and our sort of duty to the public, I think we have a really a sacred duty to participate in this and not delegate this when cities of similar situation have not done that. And I will come back with additional comments. Thank you, Chair. Chair. Madam Chair, I'd like to make one more comment before we close our presentation. Could you put chart number one back up please? That's for my presentation. So, Council Member Lane, you want chart number one? There we go. Yes, I wanted to go back to that just for a second so I was a colluding comment. As you'll notice that based on this is a budget expense shows that it was 54% in 2010 and 56% in 2011. We just recently received our comprehensive financial audit of the government for the period ending June 30, 2010 and the revenue and this includes transfers from other funds for the general fund was 347,300,000 and the cost of public safety was 191,200,000. That based on the certified audit was 55% of our general fund expenditures. The concern that I have is that the council members each represent a district or the citizens at large and our job is to represent their investment, you know, and expenditures in our city and our government and our public safety. And when the huge amount of that money is not being approved by the council, I think that is, that we're deficient in our duties to the taxpayers. I think we should assert our responsibility and authority to approve these in the future. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Stennett. I guess I'll go ahead and start off and get to the bottom of it. What are you asking this committee today, Councilman Lane, to do? I guess where are you going with this presentation? Okay, where we are, there is a resolution that would allow the council to approve the collective bargaining agreements that would apply in the future. And we have several, I believe, that are coming up for renegotiation. So the time to do that would be now. That's all I'm asking. I'm just asking that the mayor would submit the information to the council and we would vote on it And it would be an up or down vote to approve or disapprove the negotiating Is this resolution on page six of the packet? Yes, sir So that's the one you're gonna bring forward in the motion to get approved today Well, the idea was discuss it at the special meeting and then bring it forward to council for a vote. Okay I would make a couple points one, you know, we kind of did you want to I just want to clarify one thing what I put or what was put in the packet is what was drafted in 2008 right it would work but it certainly could be changed so I do not know whether mr. Lane is I'm not speaking for you at all but I just mean I want to make it clear I did not draft a new resolution this is what was presented back in 2008 right and let me just say I would be open to having it re-reviewed by the legal department I would do that anyway before we brought it back to council a couple things. One, you know, it looks like there is, you know, some conflicting opinions out there from the Attorney General to our Law Department to the folks in Frankfurt. I think, you know, there has to be some different legislative direction given to this statute in Frankfurt, and obviously that can only be done when they're in session. The second thing, you know, short of that direction being given to this council and to this city, I think we already have two powers that we're sorely underestimating that we already have as a council. One, we can be at the table during that collective bargaining negotiation. We can petition and ask the mayor to put a council member on that team if we so wanted to. We already have that option. The second option is we pass the budget, period. We can set the parameters in our budget as to how much money we can spend on collective bargaining. And that mayor, whoever mayor, he or she would have to negotiate within those parameters. So we already fund the city. We already control the budget. We already pass the budget. We can set those parameters in our own budget. if it's truly a dollar amount as demonstrated on your cost of increases each year. You know, I can argue that in 2002 we were 10% underspending on public safety where we should have been. So, I mean, just to say there's an escalated cost is not fair to say it in those terms because we probably underspent on public safety for a number of years in our government. But I think we already have the power you're looking for, if it's solely based on numbers and cost, to budget it in our budget, and the mayor, they would have to work within those parameters. Also, if you want to be at the table, I'm sure you can petition this mayor to ask to appoint a council member. So if you want to be involved, those are two ways we are already involved without state legislature's need for changes of the current ordinance. Thank you, Chair. You're welcome. And Vice Mayor Gorton. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm not a member of this committee, so I won't be voting. But I did have a couple questions for Ed Gardner. And I know I could ask this to the council members bringing it up, but I want your opinion. What do you see as the downside to not having the council sign off on these agreements from your perspective? Is there any? Subject to the issues that Mr. Stennett brought up, I don't believe there are any. Because I agree with, I mean, I was going to agree with Council Member Stenet. I think it's very, there's conflicting information, which makes me think that there's no real hardcore support for the council to weigh in on an approval. As I said when I was up here before, you know, we have to look at what other places, The only thing we can do is see what other places are doing based on the same statutes, which happen to exist. There are no court cases that I'm aware of that have ever opined on what these statutes mean. And it is, from my perspective, in terms of the, quote, best way to do it, and this is not a legal opinion, I guess, but if Louisville's been doing it that way and it works, maybe that's a good way to do it. but it still begs the question of if it ever went to court, what does it mean when it says that the contract is effective as soon as the mayor signs it, doesn't need to be published. Does that mean that a mayor could decide, I'm not going to involve the council at all and I'm going to commit the government? Those things have never been litigated, and I would be speculating to some extent to try to tell you how those issues might be resolved. I just want to make that clear. I think one of the interesting things is that one reason the mayor signs off is the mayor has representation in every bargaining meeting. The council has no representation. That's correct, and I do think, you know, while I guess you can ask the mayor to do anything, a mayor to do anything, I don't know that, having been a person at the table, I don't know that it would be good practice to have a council member involved through the whole negotiation because they go up and down, they're all over the place, you never know what the final agreement's going to be until it's reached. It can be very, very misleading and I think very awkward. I'm not advocating that at all. I'm just saying it's very easy to see why the mayor has to sign off. The mayor has continuous input through the whole negotiations. The council does not, and I'm not advocating that the council sit in there. That's not what I'm saying. It's just that was one of my major concerns last time is, you know, council's not in there. Why would council sign off on that? I'm not sure when we haven't negotiated it. And so that's just my own perspective is that the council doesn't negotiate it, so the council understandably wouldn't sign off on it. And when we approve the budget, I guess, is kind of a final say on all of that. I realize it's after the fact of the signing of the agreements. But that was a sticking point last time this came up was signing off on something that you had no input into. So that is my comments. Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilmember Stenet, you're showing up on my screen again. Well, there are some that haven't spoken. Okay, I don't either. Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. I want to kind of reiterate what the Vice Mayor just said because I agree with her comments And Ed, I guess you brought something forward in some of your comments, and there are some conflicting information. And like the Vice Mayor, I didn't want to sign off this last one because I felt like I was not involved in any part of the negotiations, and I felt like it was just a rubber stamp. And you said in your comments that we have an opportunity to have it brought to us, And I guess we can, at that point, if we don't agree with it, then we can send it back to them. But we really don't have any kind of negotiation tool, per se, but we can disagree with it and have them go back to the table and renegotiate. It would be an option. Well, Mr. Lane has said this, I think, in public before. I know he and I discussed it. Your approval would correspond to the union's approval. In other words, negotiating teams go to the table for both sides. They reach a tentative agreement. It is then taken to the union. If the union doesn't like it, they vote it down, and they don't adjust it. They just vote it down, and the parties go back to the table. If the council were to follow what I think I referred to in my memorandum as the Louisville model, that's what would happen. And then if that happens, then they would go back to the table, and if something didn't happen, would they just keep the same contract going forward until something? Well, that would be, you know, not necessarily. At some point, if the true impasse was reached, there might be a – there's a process set up by which the state would get involved at that point. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Madam Chair. First, I just wanted to state I think there were some comments made about the public not being involved in pension discussions and some of the costs with pension discussions. And I think that we need to make sure that we understand that there is a pension board that is very widely representative of this government, and those meetings are open. So there is plenty of opportunity, I think, for this council and for people to be involved with those discussions. I agree with councilmember stint it that we have many opportunities to Work within our budget it sounds to me like this is more of a budget issue and I'm I Guess I was a little surprised that we were bringing it up today since we do have the Attorney General's opinion That clearly states one thing we have our law department Kind of saying well we can do this But it's not what the Attorney General opinion says and then we have Louisville that we're also using as a standard But it's my understanding that they are under possibly a little bit different of a state statute than we are and I'm not sure that Our our public safety employees asked for an attorney general opinion I'm not sure that other communities have asked for that opinion and what that opinion would be just because they're doing something doesn't mean that if they got an opinion that it would be right what they're doing so I I guess I just agree with what my other colleagues have said regarding this issue thank you councilmember Martin thank you chair the attorney general opinion that the councilmember Crosby refers to is on page 15 of the packet I passed out and on page 17 last part of that I would draw your attention to the fact that says and and this is the Attorney General's some an assistant Attorney General over there who basically says nothing would prevent the mayor from contractually securing through the collecting bargaining process the ability the Lexington Fayette Urban County Council to vote on these agreements prior to their approval or signature by the mayor. I think as our own legal counsel has pointed out they've they've made several mistakes in their legal analysis in terms of the type of statutes and things like that and I'll refer you to Mr. Gardner's review of this. But I will say a couple things. One is that I just don't understand this. I mean you guys, most of y'all been on council longer than I have and maybe I'm I'm just not up to speed on this. But we approve buckets of dirt that have to be given to the city. The council has to approve a grant that is received by the city of $100. And here we have a couple hundred million dollar contracts that are, and there's all this outrage that the council would want to have an opportunity to review it, to kick the tires and to represent the people who we represent. I also don't understand the fact that the public safety unions, their membership get an opportunity to look at these. And yet somehow there's all this outrage that we as a council would want to have the opportunity to also look at this on behalf of our constituents and on behalf of the people of Lexington. I don't get this. And I think this is, I don't think people on the street understand when the city of Louisville has a virtually identical ordinance that their city council approves their collective bargaining agreement, and yet somehow this is forbidden for the Lexington City Council to look at this collective bargaining agreement. I don't understand it, and I don't think it's fair. I think that if the public safety unions, the fire union and the police union, if their membership have the right to look at their agreement and to sign off on it before it's signed on, we should as well. And I think there's an extraordinary pressure on a single individual like a mayor to have to sign a multi-hundred million dollar contract when the public at large isn't participating and when the council doesn't get to participate. So I think that this is something that should be spread among politically, not only the mayor, but also the council. I think it takes the heat off the mayor. I think if there's a problem with it, the council has additional political will to try to get the best deal it can for the taxpayers. The way it's set up, there's, I think, an extraordinary opportunity for a mayor to cut deals with public safety about political support. Now, I'm not saying that that's what this mayor has done, but what I'm saying is that there is a lot of discretion to be able to approve this level of contract and this level of expenditure. And I think it's inappropriate for this council to somehow say that this is faux pas and this is hands-off and that how dare we want to look at this and how dare we want to represent the public in an extraordinarily large expenditure of this nature. I mean, I'm just, I find it completely outrageous. And I find it a dereliction of the council's duties. And the fact that the city of Louisville has substantially the same ordinance and and and we are somehow forbidden to do that so actually I want to find out Richard can it can I ask you a question real quick so this has come up and you guys have had a chance to think about this is the mayor planning on signing collective barding without coming to the council I mean I think first the mayor wants to get through the collective we've hired a consultant this time and I I think we ought to at least give this consultant a chance, and I hope the mayor and we'll give you an update on how these parts are going, but I don't know if we can get detailed. But I think this consultant is going to be able to bring something we haven't had in a long time, and I hope you all give us a chance. So the consultant's going to decide whether or not the mayor's going to consult the council on approving, what is this, going to be $160 million? Well, I think what the consultant's going to be, he's been doing this all over the country, And I think we hired him to do what's best for this city. The consultant's from Louisville, is he not? No, he's from Cincinnati. Cincinnati. And I think we ought to give him an opportunity. And I think the mayor, as you all know how he feels about this, but right now I think let's give the consultant a chance. I think it has nothing to do with the consultant. I think this is about the Urban County Council representing the people of Lexington on an expenditure of about $160 million. And I think it's outrageous that this city delegates an expenditure of that magnitude to a single individual. And I think this council is abandoning their duty. And I think they're basically delegating a huge decision like this to a single individual. So I know I'm sorry I cut you off, but my four seconds is up. Well, another option you have is, and I know that the legislators put this together. my recommendation is you go back and find the legislators that define you all how you want the council involved and let them follow the channels and then I think you get a sponsor on that and then have what the legislator would do. That would be my recommendation because they're the ones who put this together and we're just doing what they handed over to us. But I think all I ask is we get this consultant a chance but I would definitely, if I were you all, try to work with the legislator and try to get that language changed. Because it sounds like to me you all had this same problem three years ago, so we're going to come through this again. I think you've got three years to find your legislator to go out there and try to keep coming back with a broken record that we're all sitting here. A lot of this stuff we all agree on, but the problem is the legislators have to make this change. And I don't know if you all have the authority to do that. From what the Attorney General just said, I don't see that authority there. But I think, to me, you all have got a heck of a case, I think the legislators ought to hear what you all are concerned about. Thank you, Mr. Maloney. Mr. Lane. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to make a few closing comments too. This is an issue of the council asserting its rights and duties to approve expenditures and contracts. And as Councilmember Martin mentioned, we approve, you know, a load of dirt being put on the urban county government property, but we can approve a collective bargaining agreement. I would refer the council members to Section 4.08 powers and I want to read a couple of lines out of here. It says, all legislative powers of the merged government are vested in the council and the should have the power to act legislatively with respect to all matters which are within the powers of the merged government. Now that says what it says. We have the right and duty and authority to approve every item that's within the powers of the merged government and one of them is entering into contracts. The term legislative power is to be construed broadly, That's a pretty broad word. And shall include the power to review the budgets of and appropriate money to the Merge Government and such independent agencies as provided for in this charter. So I think if we just look at what the charter says, this is an issue of us asserting our right as council to approve major expenditures by the government. And I do feel like it's a dereliction of our duty as council members not to do that. Because if we're going to delegate the authority to the mayor to sign these contracts, then we might as well not even be a counsel. Just let him sign all the contracts. Let him sign the approval to take the dirt load over here and the $100 grant from charity or whatever. Why do we need a counsel? We're not doing our duty as counsel members, and I just feel very strongly about this. And in order to take back that authority to approve these agreements, we should pass a resolution saying that we will review these and vote them up or down. And then that gives us some involvement in the final decision made by the government. And if there's a question about whether the law is vague or you know one person interprets this way and one interprets it another way, this is not an opinion from the Attorney General that's irrelevant. You know before you can have a valuable opinion you have to have a court of competent jurisdiction and rule on the issue and say whether we have the right or not. Now I would be surprised if this went before a judge and the judge would say that the elected officials of the urban county government who represent the taxpayers are not able to vote on a $150 million contract that we're just going to let the mayor sign it and we'll be obligated. And I ask the other council members, I want anybody here to raise your hand who in the last six years has gone back and said let's cut the budget for public safety, let's, you know, we're not going to give all the money, we've got a contract, we're going to cut the budget. We have not done that and that is not what I want us to do. I want us to live within our means but when, you know, things are done, I mean, one of the issues that just came up was the, you know, compensation for overtime where if you work eight hours overtime you can get, you know, time and a half and additional comp time and then somebody else has to come in and cover your job and then we have to pay them time and a half. I mean there's some things in the collective bargaining agreements I think are not well done and there were a lot of mistakes made in our initial contract. So I'm asking the council to assert its authority to do its duty that it was elected to do and that's to represent the taxpayers. you madam chairman councilmember Crosby um thank you I just wanted to follow up on a couple comments that were made first the council has ordinances that require us to vote on buckets of dirt and grants and things that we receive as a government that those are those are required because we have ordinances that mandate that we do that we have KRS statute that dictates collective bargaining and KRS statute as I understand and maybe our law commissioner could tell us differently but that does supersede our local government ordinances so when we have well it looks like she's walking up I I think in this case, you've got an area of the law in the KRS, probably, that's written, and Ed, you can correct me, that's not written in a completely way where it does not result in one uniform interpretation. So if that's the way, but if you had a clear cut provision of the KRS, it would supersede a local ordinance. In this case, I'm not real sure that the KRS statute is clear enough. I think, frankly, I think the way Ed wrote the opinion is it doesn't disagree with the Attorney General's opinion. It probably conforms to it. Is that fair? The one thing that the statute, the way it reads, is not inconsistent with the procedure that Louisville is following. Because their statute is 99% word for word of the same statute. And what they do, the mayor does sign the contract, which is what the statute says must be done. But they have set up a procedure by which the council looks at it before the mayor signs it. So they can definitely be read. It's not a situation where the statute lays out a complete process and then the local government is doing something totally different. The statute can be read to be consistent with what Louisville is doing and what we could do. Well, so just cherry-picking then from the Attorney General's opinion, because, I mean, I could cherry-pick this thing to death just like Council Member Martin did where the last paragraph seems to say, well, maybe you can, maybe you can't, but then you go down, go two paragraphs above that, and it talks about the General Assembly's intent, that interpretation's in there. If you go on the page before, it also talks about the statute again. And so I think that leaves us very confused. And I don't know that the Attorney General, I don't know how their office feels, but I mean for us to say that their opinion doesn't, I think is, we've asked for their opinion on many different things and it seems to matter when it fits what we wanted to say. Well, this is not a formal opinion of the Attorney General, which means that in no context could it ever be cited for any kind of authority. And as I pointed out in my memorandum, it contains some very fundamental flaws. It cites the wrong statutes. So what would this be considered? Just a letter? Yes. Well, maybe we need to get a formal opinion from the Attorney General regarding this issue. Well, that's what was asked for. You can't guarantee you're going to get one. I'm sure my Commissioner can fill you in on that process much better than I can. Just as a matter of process with the Attorney General's Office, they get so many requests every year for attorney general opinions they probably issue and I probably couldn't give you the current stats but they probably get probably ten opinion requests a day and I would say they probably issue ten formal opinions a year or something like that. So they just generally when you write in they do what these are called miscellaneous letters and if you'll notice I believe if you look at the opinion it generally starts out with this is not a formal opinion but we hope it's helpful to you so that's kind of the way that works so I guess my question is then who do you go to on a state level to find out what exactly was the intent I think that we I recall the meeting very well where we sat here and we had state legislatures here who were telling us what their intent of the statute was so so who who then you do you interpret that for us um i think you can still ask the attorney general for a formal opinion but that i think that was done last time which resulted in the letter that was received by you all so you know as far as and and even on even on attorney general opinions that are formal it does not mean necessarily that everybody's going to agree with those because, you know, it's really up to the courts to make those interpretations in some ways. So you say the court has to... I think the courts are always the final arbiter on state statutes and the interpretations of them. Well, I would also suggest to, you know, just the fact that we do have ordinances in place that require us to vote on certain things. And then we also have, back to what Council Member Stenet said, we have the ability within our budget, we have a public safety link right now. I'm not sure that it has even been recommended to them. I don't know if you all have had those discussions to the link to come back to us with some restrictions, budgetary restrictions with public safety as part of the negotiations. I know that many of us on this link have served on public safety, the public safety link for budget before. And that has not been asked for us. We look for ways to cut budget all the time and to be fiscally responsible. And maybe that's a charge that could be made to that committee. I also – Council Member Crosby, you're out of time. I didn't even see my time up there. Thank you. Okay. I'm sorry. It was timed, but okay. Okay. Council Member Lane, you have already spoken twice on this and are a member of the committee. And Council Member Henson is in the queue to speak. So Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. I have a question about our budget that we pass. we pass a certain amount for public safety, and then how does the collective bargaining play into that? Can someone answer that? I'm not sure I understand the question exactly. I'm also not sure I'll be able to answer it. Once the contract's approved, and there's raises and so forth, does that go into effect immediately? The contracts that we've had, and Leslie Jarvis has been here, has been in all the negotiations as well, and she can correct me, but I believe all those have been made effective as of the beginning of a fiscal year. Okay. So then they're taken into account in the budget for that fiscal year. That's been history. So we could put a cap on, could we say set perimeters within our budget for the mayor to follow? I'm struggling a little bit with that. It brings into question all the issues that are swarming around this whole thing. But I think that if you're talking about before the negotiations, I would say probably yes. But I can't say for certain. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Council Member and Madam Chairman. I appreciate that. I want to just close out with a couple of other thoughts, and that is that I've been a strong supporter of public safety. I feel that public safety is probably the number one mission of our government to keep our community safe and protect us from fires and emergencies, things like that. So the fact that I'm asking for the approval of the collective bargaining agreements by the council is not in any way to negate the high quality public safety services that we have in our community. I get back to the fact that it's the duty of the council to take its legislative duties seriously and we're supposed to approve these expenditures. And just my closing thought, I'd like for all the council members to go walk out in your neighborhood and ask your constituent, do you want me to vote? We've got a collective bargaining agreement come up. It's going to be $150 million. Would you like the council to approve that, or do you just want the mayor to sign off on it? And I bet you that 99 out of 100 people would say, we would like the council to be involved in reviewing that before it's executed by the government. And so I just feel that this is not even a gray area. This is a black and white area. The black point being, that's our duty to approve this, and we need to assert our duty to take charge as a legislative body and approve these expenses. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I'm signing off. Sign off noted. Council Member Martin, if you would like to make a, since you've spoken twice and you weren't the presenter, if you would like to make a brief statement. I will withdraw that. No, you can go on. Okay. I was just going to say. It's time for us to entertain a motion. Okay. and I will turn that over to Council Member Lane to do that as well. He can't make the motion because he's not on the committee, I don't think. Council Member Stinnett, is that correct? If someone's not on the committee, they cannot make the motion. Is that correct? Okay, that is correct. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess the last sort of thing I want to say is that I think through the years there's been a fundamental disconnect between the promises made during collective bargaining and what the council has been willing to fund. We have not been willing to fund the public safety pension fund, which was part of the thing I was trying to present earlier for which I was cut off. This is an important thing because the promises made during these collective bargaining agreements are important. And we as a council have to fund them and have to live up to them. And this council and folks who have been on this council for 12 years have not done that. They have hired time and time again public safety workers on the promise that they're going to pay their pension. And the council hasn't done it. The council has fallen through on adequately funding the pension and adequately supervising the cost of these departments. And I think that the time has come to bring our promises and what the council is willing to fund together so that we can work together to have the best public safety department we can afford and to fulfill the promises that have been made through the years. Now, since I've been on council, I've voted for approximately $106 million to fund these things. And I, too, have support. I voted for the radio system before the games, but the council chose not to fund that. And there's some other things I voted for on public safety that council have not chosen to do. So I feel that public safety is the most important thing, as Council Member Lane has indicated. But we have to bring together what our promises are to what, number one, we're able to afford, but also to what the council is willing to fund. And so based on that, I'm going to make a motion that the committee refer to the full council a resolution to be drafted by the legal department and updated, whereby the council would approve collecting bargaining agreements prior to being signed by the mayor. So moved. Second. You can't second that. Second. Second. Okay, there's a motion in one of these two packets, I believe. There's a legal science document that looks like this, and I'm assuming this is Mr. Councilmember Lane's motion from 2008, and I understand, I reckon, that's, is that the same thing? Is this it? And so Mr. Gardner has recommended that we revisit this and I would ask them to work on rewriting that prior to bringing it before the full council. So, Council Member Martin, to be clear, you are making a motion that we instruct the law department to redraft the resolution that was presented in 2008 and bring it back to this committee? Sure. Go ahead. I'm not sure that's that's close. Okay. My motion was to refer to the full council a motion for a resolution that the council's approval should be obtained prior to the mayor's signing of collecting bargaining agreements and that at the time it's presented to the council that the law department will have updated this resolution with any of its comments. Okay, let me repeat that so I'm clear. you're making a motion that we send to the full council a resolution that would make, require the council to approve collective bargaining agreements and that by the time it gets to the full council, the resolution will be redrafted by the law department. Would that? That's pretty close. Can I add, since I'm the law department in this case? Yes, sir, you can. Without any guidance, then I think what's here would work. I'd just have to change the date to 2011. But if there are any things in here that people would want to change, I would need to know about that. I thought you had specific objections to this. No, I don't have any objections to it. But I just wanted the council to understand that I had not done any redrafting based on Mr. Lane and my conversation. So we'll refer the existing resolution. Okay. So the motion on the floor is to. Council Member. May I add? I think it's important that I add. Excuse me. I'm sorry. I didn't know where it was coming from. One thing before you vote, to address Council Member Martin's concern earlier about the mayor being willing to sign the collective bargaining agreements without council approval, he's prepared to do that, but he's looking for partners in this process and he would like council approval before he proceeds and does sign those contracts. That's great. That's terrific. I appreciate you bringing that up because maybe it makes our job a little easier. However, that's not really pertinent to this resolution. We have a motion on the floor, seconded by Council Member Farmer. And do I hear any discussion? Something's not working. So, Council Member Lane. Yeah, I would just ask the committee to vote this up to the council for review because this is a very, very important issue regarding the rights and the duties of the council and it's also a major expenditure and it's a major public policy issue. And for you just allow it to go to, I would like to see a recommendation out of the committee to go to full council for review and vote on this. Thank you. Thank you. And Councilmember Ellinger. I guess a couple questions. For our council approval, what part, how are we going to be involved in this process? Because from the chief staff just said we're going to be a partner in the process and I'm not sure how we are involved in the process outside of receiving the contract at the end and then we just say okay and sign it. Isn't that what we do with everything we approve? Are we at the table when we negotiate any of the things that the administration does? I guess I don't understand that, Council Member Ellinger, that all the things that appear in our docket we don't personally participate in. But we also, they get blue sheeted, they have first and second reading and we are part of a process. Here you're going to tell us we're going to sign something and that's all we're involved in the process. I think the process can be whatever we make it because we don't have to approve it until we're ready to approve it. I can think it can be whatever we want it to be. I think you put that part of the motion in that how we're going to be involved in the process. Because at this point, I don't see us really involved outside of giving a signature. And I don't see if we're going to be a partner in the process, we need to be somehow involved in it. Council Member Crosby? No, he said what I was going to say. When we have other contracts and items come before us, we have the opportunity to discuss them. And it's not just an up-down vote. Thank you. Anybody else? Council Member Lane. Yes. You know, my thought is once the agreement's been negotiated and the mayor's ready to refer it to the council, we'd probably have a hearing on it and review the terms and conditions and all that and, you know, make a decision if there's something we had a problem with. And I think that there's going to be a lot of analysis done. There will be the total cost over the three-year period and what kind of step raises and all those things will be all shown in there. We'd have a chance to review that. I think that's all that I'm asking for. And, you know, one of the strengths of our council is that we do have 15 council members. And each of us has different experience and expertise. And when an issue comes before our council, the collective knowledge of our body is really significant because there's somebody on there that knows a lot about something that's being brought before us and some that know a few things about it. But as a collective body, I think that, you know, we would be able to review this and, you know, make a recommendation back to the mayor to sign it or to say we have a real serious concern about something and refer it back to him for reconsideration. Thank you. Anybody want to call for that? Yes. I just want to address Councilmember Ellinger's question. In Section C of this, Councilmember Ellinger, it states that the Urban County Council shall consider the proposed collective bargaining agreement, which consideration may include the questioning of negotiators for the government and the collective bargaining unit. And I guess if there's some question about whether we're allowed to discuss it, we could say shall consider and discuss. if there's a concern that somehow the council, what we're not allowed to do is we're not allowed to amend it. But we can certainly discuss it and question folks and understand it. But I think our vote has to be an up or down vote. Is that helpful at all, Councilman? That still appears that we're just rubber stamping the administration, I guess. Not if we say no. It gives us an opportunity to ask questions and discuss it and to kick the tires. And it's certainly not a rubber stamp if after that deliberation, after the questions that we ask, and that after the discussing it among ourselves and reviewing the actual document, which we don't get to do at all, we vote no. We're not willing to accept this. This is an unreasonable agreement. Or, you know, I don't see how that could be considered a rubber stamp. Do you? Okay, we don't need to back and forth. Councilmember Crosby. Are the collective bargaining negotiations confidential? Yes. So, okay, that answers my question. I'll stop. Thank you. But Mr. Gardner, our deliberations can be in closed session. Is that correct, Mr. Gardner? Can our discussions be on collective bargaining be in closed session? Your all's discussions? I don't think so. Okay. We have a motion. We have a second. If there's no more discussion, please vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Why don't we do an electronic vote since not everybody's on the committee? Councilmember Henson, is your screen not on? So you're a nay. So it fails by a vote of four no's to yes's. Thank you. There's a motion to... You're not a member of the committee. I'm sorry. I'm ready to adjourn. Councilmember Crosby moved to adjourn. Council Member Ellinger, another member of the committee also moved to adjourn. All in favor say aye. Opposed? This meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.