City ratifies petition on pay
Firefighters seeking parity with police meet standard to trigger referendum
A petition Houston firefighters submitted last summer seeking pay parity with police contains enough valid signatures to trigger a referendum election, City Secretary Anna Russell reported to Mayor Sylvester Turner and the City Council on Thursday.
Russell finished verifying the signatures a day ahead of a deadline given to the city by a state district judge last month. The judge originally set a deadline of April 27 after the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association sued the city last December, complaining Russell’s office had not validated its referendum petition in time for either the November 2017 or May 2018 ballots. Judge Dan Hinde agreed to give Russell another week after city lawyers said additional staff and overtime had been approved to finish the count.
Russell’s memo to the mayor and council said her office checked 26,708 signatures against Harris County’s list of qualified voters; 20,228 were verified. State law requires 20,000 qualified signatures on a petition to get a referendum on the ballot.
It is unclear when the item will appear before voters. City attorneys argued in court that
the Turner administration does not intend to schedule a vote before the next regular municipal election cycle in November 2019, but the mayor, when asked about the petition count Wednesday, said the city council would have to discuss the matter.
Could cost million
Fire union president Marty Lancton, who was a plaintiff in the case, cheered the ruling and thanked Russell and her staff for their work.
“This is another victory for Houston firefighters and citizens who petitioned the city for fair pay for firefighters,” he said. “With our recent court victory and this validation of the petitions, we urge the city of Houston to respect the will of voters and put this issue on the next election ballot in November 2018.”
Firefighters submitted the petition last July asking for a ballot referendum that, if approved by voters, would grant firefighters the same pay as police officers of corresponding rank.
Turner has estimated the cost of implementing that proposal at about $60 million per year; the city faces projected deficits of more than $100 million in each of the next five years.
Turner said Wednesday he presumed the petition contained enough names to trigger a vote, but he suggested the proposal’s lack of clarity could undermine its validity, noting, for instance, that hundreds more firefighters than police officers carry the rank of “captain.”
“I don’t know what parity means,” Turner said. “Does it mean you scale everything down?
“If the voters vote on something, the voters need to know what they’re voting (on).”
State law sets no timeline on which charter petitions must be validated, and Russell said her staff’s other other duties prevented them from validating the firefighters’ petition in time for the November or May elections.
Russell received three petitions last year, one of which fell under a chapter of state law that forced her to count it within 30 days.
After doing so, she returned to tallying a pension-related petition to amend the city charter that her office received in April.
The firefighters’ petition, which also would amend the charter, was submitted in July.
Contract talks stalled
The secretary’s office is charged with verifying that a sufficient number of the names on submitted petitions belong to registered voters who live inside the city of Houston.
Throughout the petition fight, the fire union also has pursued a lawsuit against the city over stalled contract talks.
Firefighters have been without a contract for almost four years, have received just a 3 percent raise since 2010, and were irate over Turner’s successful push to reduce city workers’ pension benefits at the Texas Legislature last year.