Contract dispute at focus of city election
Six of Houston’s mayoral candidates agreed that arbitration between the city and the firefighter’s union may be inevitable to settle the bitter contract dispute, but they differed on how to approach the issue during a forum on Monday.
The city and its firefighters have been mired in a bitter contract stalemate for essentially all of Mayor Sylvester Turner’s tenure, fighting in court and at the ballot box for years. The most recent contract between the city and its firefighters expired in 2017, and the union sued the city then, arguing it broke the state law that governs how cities pay police and firefighters. That case still is playing out, and the next mayor likely will have to figure out how to broker a resolution.
State Sen. John Whitmire was adamant that resolving the years-long impasse would be his top priority if elected, citing his initiation and passage of a law that makes binding arbitration the automatic resolution to contract stalemates in Houston. Previously, the city and the firefighters’ union had to agree to go to arbitration, and the city rejected the union’s requests for the process.
“I passed legislation this spring requiring the city to sit down and go to mandatory arbitration,” Whitmire said Monday. “We cannot have our major first responders as adversaries to City Hall. It’s just nuts. So they will be my highest priority.”
The answers in Monday’s mayoral forum, hosted by the Greater Houston Women’s Chamber of Commerce, came the same day as attorneys for the city asked a judge to declare Whitmire’s bill unconstitutional because they argued it unfairly targets Houston. The firefighters’ union is asking the judge to trigger that law and send the two sides to arbitration.
The candidates’ were not explicitly asked whether they would drop the city’s legal challenge if the case continues into the next administration, but several signaled they would. Whitmire has said the Turner administration is “kicking the can down the road,” and former Metro Chair Gilbert Garcia said he would initiate the process upon taking office.
“My view is I would immediately go into arbitration with the firefighters because as mayor, my job would be to implement the will of the voters period,” Garcia said. “I’m not here to question the voters. I’m not here to be a dictator of the voters, but to really implement the will of the voters. And I really appreciate the senator putting forward the bill and make it a law to do such.”
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee said the city is bound by the law now, though she pointed out the Fiscal Year 2024 budget, which covers July 2023 through June 2024, has already been completed, signaling there may only be room in the next budget to respond to the dispute. The city and union still are sparring about which years are covered by the arbitration bill.
“We’re going to have to deal with what was rendered,” U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee told the Chronicle Monday. “It’s a bill that was passed in the state and we’re not going to be able to get past it.”
Attorney Lee Kaplan and businessman M.J. Khan said they both disagreed with the city’s handling of the disputes. Khan felt negotiations have not been held in “good faith.”
Kaplan said the current administration can be “faulted for not talking with the firefighters.” The city’s firefighters union is led by Marty Lancton, the president of Local 341.
“As prickly as I hear Marty is, and I know he’s out there (in the crowd), I would still talk with him,” he said. “If we have to go to an arbitration, we will if it busts a hole in the budget. Well, that’s what we signed up for.”
City Councilmember Robert Gallegos spoke out in support of the city, however, citing that they have given 18-percent pay raises over three years to firefighters, along with raises for police officers and municipal employees. He said he would do what he could to avoid arbitration by settling the dispute in other ways if he is elected.
“My office will always be open for the fire department union, for the police department union, as well as our municipal union to come in, to air out any grievances that they may have to see if we can take care of them before it goes into arbitration,” Gallegos said.
The city, locked in court with the union since 2017, responded to the lawsuit by challenging the constitutionality of a key tenet of the law that governs how cities pay firefighters, contributing to years of lengthy appeals that held up the issue. While that was on appeal, firefighters won voter approval in 2018 of a city charter amendment that would have given them pay parity with police officers of equal rank and seniority.
Earlier this year, a joint Supreme Court ruling threw out the city’s constitutional challenge, while also striking down the firefighters’ pay parity initiative, sending the two sides back to court.
In Monday’s court hearing, lawyers for the union and the city clashed about whether Whitmire’s bill is retroactive and should apply to the full sevenyear dispute. Judge Lauren Reeder did not issue a ruling on either sides’ requests.
Troy Blakeney, the union’s lead attorney, suggested during that meeting that the city is merely trying to delay a resolution to the impasse.
“In this case, they don’t want (a resolution) at all,” he said.
Election day is Nov. 7, and the last day to register to vote is Oct. 10.