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March 29, 2007

OR SB400 and small cities

I'll state upfront that I haven't personally researched any of this. I simply haven't had the time. So I'm just going to relay what I was told.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before or not but I was recently appointed to the Forest Grove Historic Landmarks Board. Tuesday was our regular monthly meeting and our City Council Liason, who is a member of the City Council, sat in on the meeting. Near the end of the meeting the Chairman asked her to give us a report on what's happening within the Council. So she told us about a couple of hot issues, one of them being SB400.

SB400 is a piece of legislation dealing with the collective bargaining rights of police and fire unions. One portion of it would apparently alter the decades-long method by which appropriate staffing levels are determined.

At present, staffing levels are determined primarily by OSHA with the local police and fire chiefs having input on the final decision. This has historically enabled the local governmental entity to have some measure of control over the issue, which is important since those local police and fire employees are paid out of local coffers.

What SB400 would do is take that decision away from both OSHA and the local police/fire chiefs and give it to the unions via collective bargaining authority.

Where this gets interesting is right here in Forest Grove. This last November the city put a levy on the ballot specifically for both police and fire dept. funding. That levy failed and faced with the choice between laying off personell or going into bankruptcy the city took the only fiscally prudent path and trimmed both the police and fire staffing, which the city has made extremely clear was NOT what they wanted to have to do.

According to this Counciler the city is gravely concerned about this provision of SB400 because it could literally force the city into bankruptcy if a future levy fails like this recent one did.

Posted by Kevin at March 29, 2007 12:52 PM