http://www.newsday.com/coverage/current/news/wednesday/nd9715.htm
Pay Hike for Police
Four-year, 20 percent raise likely to boost Suffolk taxes
by Andrew Metz
Staff Writer
A contract arbitration panel has broken a stalemate between Suffolk and its police officers, boosting salaries that were already among the highest in the nation and prompting an all but inevitable double-digit tax increase next year.
The decision will give Suffolk officers less than the 5.5 percent annual raises they sought but grants them a nearly 20 percent hike over four years, vaulting the average pay to roughly $105,000 by 2003.
Allowances for cleaning bills, uniforms, night work and special assignments were also increased as part of an arbitration, which has left county officials trying to figure out how to comply with tax and spending caps while imposing the biggest tax surge in recent memory for residents in the five western towns protected by the police.
Average property tax bills in Babylon, Islip, Brookhaven, Smithtown and Huntington will be about $133 more next year, according to county estimates on the proposed 20 percent tax hike.
"We are disappointed, and now we have to deal with it," said County Executive Robert Gaffney, whose administration had allocated only enough money to cover 2 percent raises this year and now is predicting at least a $15 million hole. During just the first two years of the contract, the county will need to raise at least $60 million to pay for the raises.
In Suffolk, most police expenses are paid out of a police district fund, and budget experts said yesterday that there was no way to cut from this pot without laying off officers. And they said there was little room to trim from the $1.3-billion general fund, which supports health services, parks and other programs.
However, under county law, tax and spending increases for discretionary items such as police are capped at 4 percent, unless 14 of the 18 legislators agree to pierce the limit.
"It definitely puts the county executive in very difficult circumstances," said Frederick Pollert, director of the legislature's budget review office. "He is going to have to come up with a mechanism to comply with the caps and fund police services, and it is going to be a very difficult task." Furthermore, officials predicted the award, which was disclosed yesterday, will discourage future contract negotiations because unions can count on generous arbitration decisions.
The large hike also will continue a pattern in which Suffolk and Nassau officers have leapfrogged each other through a series of steadily increasing arbitrator awards.
"How do you sit down at the bargaining table when binding arbitration gives a union numbers like this?" Gaffney asked.
Under the award, though, the county won some substantial concessions. The current drug testing policy will be expanded to include alcohol testing, and officers hired after July 1, 2000, will start off with $10,000 cut from their base pay. The starting salary is now about $45,000.
Kenneth Weiss, the county budget director, said it is unclear from the arbitrator's report what the long-term impact of this reduction will be, but it could at least save $1 million on the next 100 officers hired.
Newly appointed Chief of Department Philip Robilotto said the department plans to cut overtime and make more jobs civilian ones to reduce spending.
In a written statement, Jeff Frayler, president of the police union, said, "We feel it's a fair award." The union representative on the three-member arbitration panel, Ron Davis, said the new contract is in the same "ballpark" as other neighboring departments-a factor the panel considered.
The Suffolk contract is retroactive for this year, calling for a 4.6 percent increase. In 2001, the officers pay would rise 4.75 percent and in the final two years 4.5 percent. Overall, this will jump the base pay from $70,659 to $84,543-not including overtime and extra stipends that are being boosted as well, according to county figures.
Davis, a Hauppauge attorney, said the police aren't to blame for tax increases. The county "had a fiduciary responsibility to look around. Who has settled a 2 percent contract in New York State and in this area?" However, Gaffney's chief deputy, Eric Kopp, disputed this, saying that budgeting any more than 2 percent could have opened the door for an even larger award. "It is sort of a damned if you don't, damned if you do scenario," he said. "By having 2 percent in there, at least we cushion the blow somewhat." Jerry Markon contributed to this story
