‘Parity’ measure will be battle at the ballot By Jasper Scherer
Both sides launch ads, hold town halls as vote on firefighter pay looms
A year after convincing voters that fiscal prudence was needed to fix Houston’s costly pension programs, Mayor Sylvester Turner again is pushing financial pragmatism at the ballot box.
This time, however, his opponent is not a faceless bureaucratic money hole. Instead, the mayor is waging a public fight with Houston firefighters, who remain one of the most popular employee groups in the public’s mind.
At issue is a fire union-backed proposal that would grant firefighters pay “parity” with police officers of corresponding rank and seniority. Turner says that firefighters deserve a raise but that the city cannot afford the measure, a claim firefighters dispute.
Now, with less than six weeks until Election Day, both sides are digging in for the homestretch of an increasingly bitter campaign, raising money, holding town halls and waging war on social media over what’s known as Proposition B.
“The key is education. This is the type of proposal that you don’t want voters thinking about for the first time when they’re casting their bal-
lots, if you’re Sylvester Turner,” said Mark Jones, a Rice University political scientist. “The knee-jerk reaction from someone who knows nothing about this, other than what they read at the polling place, is to vote for it, because it’s pay equity for firefighters — everybody likes firefighters.”
Turner lost the first skirmish when a state district judge ordered the city to count tens of thousands of signatures on a petition the firefighters’ union gathered last year to put the parity question to voters. The petition was validated in May, but it was another three months before City Council voted to put the item on the November ballot.
Since then, the mayor has embarked on a series of community meetings, hoping to convince voters that the measure would cost tens of millions of dollars and force the city to lay off nearly 1,000 workers, including firefighters and police.
Turner, more than a year out from re-election and at last count sitting on a $2.26 million war chest, recently spent his own campaign cash on a $38,000 radio ad buy that began running Sept. 17 and will continue through Oct. 14, eight days before early voting begins. The ads urge voters to oppose the parity initiative while supporting Proposition A, which would reaffirm the street and drainage repair program known as ReBuild Houston.
Meanwhile, a political action committee opposing the “parity” measure — independent from the city but run by Sue Davis, a consultant who has long worked for Turner — plans to raise “at least $1 million,” Davis said. The PAC, called Protect Houston, is running a website called “badforhouston.com.”
The Houston Police Officers’ Union PAC also has made a series of TV and radio ad buys to oppose Prop B. The ads are running in September on CNBC, Fox News, MSNBC, KTRH and KODA, according to Federal Communications Commission records.
Supporting the “parity” item is an operation of at least 2,500 volunteers who signed up online to block walk, phone bank and work the early voting polls. The Support Our Firefighters PAC, managed by fire union board member Brian Wilcox, also is airing radio ads to counter those funded by Turner and the police union, while running a website called “supporthoustonfirefighters.com.”
Turner’s administration has said passage of the ballot item would amount to a 25 percent raise costing the city $98 million a year. Turner has since offered to raise police officers’ pay by 7 percent over two years beginning in July 2019, however, which would add an estimated $14.5 million to the cost of the parity proposal in the first year, Turner wrote in a Monday memo to council members. If the parity measure passes in November, the memo said, the corresponding increase in firefighter pay from the new police raises would be a cumulative two-year total of $41.5 million, on top of the $52.7 million two-year cost in police pay.
Fire union President Marty Lancton has called Turner’s raise estimates a “political talking point,” arguing that Prop B does not mandate an immediate 25 percent pay raise. Lancton also has disputed that “parity” would cost the city $98 million, but the union has not offered its own figure.
Is it affordable?
The topic of “equal compensation” for fire and police professionals has polled favorably, Wilcox said. Prop B generally is expected to pass, though Turner and the police union are intent on defeating it.
Doing so would require Turner to convince enough people that Prop B is not a referendum on firefighters. He has focused much of his energy at the town halls on explaining his desire to give firefighters higher pay, just not what they are seeking through the ballot item.
“Our job is to make it a referendum on the measure,” said Grant Martin, a consultant for the Protect Houston PAC who also is Turner’s chief political consultant. “We want to pay firefighters fairly. But this is a deeply flawed, poorly written measure.”
At his first four community meetings, Turner told audiences that firefighters rejected a 9.5 percent raise over three years that remains “on the table.” He further argued that it would set a bad precedent to “negotiate employee benefits and pay by referendum.”
“Let me be very, very clear: What’s on the ballot is not whether you like firefighters or whether you don’t,” Turner said at a Sept. 10 town hall. “I respect them, I appreciate them, and they are deserving of a raise. The question is, what is the city’s ability to pay? What can we afford?”
Lancton said firefighters overwhelmingly rejected a 4 percent raise in June 2014 under former Mayor Annise Parker because the city’s offer included benefit cuts that would have effectively neutralized the raises.
As for Turner’s 9.5 percent figure, Lancton said the city never officially offered firefighters the raise during collective bargaining. Regardless, Lancton said, such a raise would not close the pay gap between fire and police employees that he believes should be eliminated.
The firefighters’ turn to the ballot to win a substantial boost in pay stems from years of difficult, halting contract negotiations with City Hall. It also ties back, in part, to Turner’s successful pension reform effort that resulted in pension benefit cuts for all city workers. The firefighters were the only employee group that fought the proposal, both in Austin and at City Council, leaving them with the sense they had been railroaded while police officers had gotten a better deal from a sympathetic City Hall.
Crowded ballot
To reach enough voters, Turner and his allies — including the Greater Houston Partnership, the Houston Realty Business Coalition and the C Club of Houston, business groups that announced their opposition to the measure this week — will have to cut through the surrounding political noise, a task that could prove difficult, said Rice University political scientist Bob Stein.
Stein said voters will be paying attention to competitive local races — like the 7th Congressional District, where Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, and Democratic challenger Lizzie Pannill Fletcher are also running TV ads — and the much-followed Senate race between U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Beto O’Rourke, DEl Paso.
“This is all about who has the biggest bullhorn,” Stein said.
Prop B supporters have the political advantage, Jones said, because they have a simpler case to make.
“The firefighters have a relatively easy message: We’re devoted public servants who save lives, we deserve to be paid as much as police officers,” he said.
Turner also faces the challenge of persuading voters to oppose Prop B while supporting Prop A, which would affirm a “payas-you-go” fund devoted to repairing, maintaining and upgrading street and drainage infrastructure. The socalled ReBuild Houston program draws funding from developer impact fees, property drainage charges, part of the city’s property taxes and a mix of third-party contracts and grants.
Voters approved the program in 2010, but the Texas Supreme Court ruled the ballot language did not properly identify the drainage charge. Turner has said Prop A would not create a new fee or raise any existing ones, and he would continue to implement the same program regardless of the vote outcome.
At one town hall, Turner repeated several times, “A is good, B is bad,” in an attempt to simplify his position to voters.
“Complicating the firefighter issue is that Houston voters have been willing to vote to increase the compensation for city employees, especially public service employees, and loosen the budget belt for public safety issues,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.
In 2006, two years after imposing a property tax revenue cap, Houston voters allowed the city to collect an extra $90 million for public safety spending.
Turner has gotten “political traction on the fiscal responsibility angle,” Rottinghaus said. But “without a full-on media strategy to try to get people to think differently, it’s tough to change people’s minds.”