Fire union president’s silence is no surprise
City Council members did a fine job acting shocked this week over the continued refusal of fire union president Chris Steele to come to the table to negotiate a new contract for firefighters.
After all, Steele had promised for years to start talks once the city dropped its lawsuit against the union. Not only did the city drop the suit last week, but Steele succeeded in running his archenemy, City Manager Sheryl Sculley, out of town, while also gaining an advantage in contract negotiations with the passage of Propositions B and C in the November election.
One of the city charter amendments approved by voters puts salary and term limits on future city managers. The other gives the fire union the unilateral ability to declare an impasse in contract negotiations and go to binding arbitration.
Anyone who has followed this bitter saga since the union’s contract expired in 2014 shouldn’t be surprised by its steely silence now. In Steele’s zero-sum estimation, victory isn’t assured until Councilman Greg Brockhouse replaces Mayor Ron Nirenberg in May, and handing the current mayor any concessions now — even by agreeing to begin bargaining — would be unthinkable.
“I took the union at its word when they said that they’d be at the table in seven days after the lawsuit was dropped,” Councilman Manny Pelaez told San Antonio Express-News Staff Writer Josh Baugh this week. “The ball is in their court, and I’m waiting for him to show up and do what he promised to do.”
Unfortunately, Pelaez will be waiting at least until after the May election.
To be sure, Brockhouse expressed his share of umbrage at Steele’s ongoing silence.
“It appears that we’re coming to a point where we’re sideways,” he told Baugh. “I can’t help them if they don’t come to the table. I can’t support not negotiating.”
If Brockhouse and Steele are suddenly “sideways,” it’s almost certainly by design.
Appearing independent from the much-maligned union would serve the councilman in his quest to unseat the mayor, and both Brockhouse and Steele know it. It’s risible, though, for the councilman to assume an above-it-all posture after the union’s destructive and mostly successful campaign to change the city charter.
Brockhouse and Steele have been in league all along, and as conspirators they’ve been lousy at hiding it.
From 2014 to 2016, their partnership was on the books.
During that period preceding Brockhouse’s run for council, the union paid him more than $61,000 in consultant fees, according to campaign finance reports.
The following year, Steele was secretly recorded sharing his master plan to a group of onduty firefighters. Beyond acquiring a favorable contract, Steele said he would “set it up to where May of 2019, we can put our own guy in the mayor’s office, which would be Greg Brockhouse in the mayor’s office.”
Did it surprise anyone that a year later, Brockhouse endorsed all three of the union’s proposed charter amendments, becoming the only council member to support any of them?
After the election, Brockhouse held a news conference — at the union hall, no less — to declare victory on behalf of his former client.
Surrounded by union officials, he said, “I think there’s a clear referendum here.”
Steele didn’t attend that news conference. Perhaps he was peeved that Nirenberg managed to stave off passage of Proposition A, a populist ploy that would have made it easier to challenge tax and spending decisions by council at the ballot box.
That amendment was intended to put council members on perpetual tenterhooks, the better to issue threats of petition drives and extract concessions in exchange for standing down.
Proposition B was an act of political vengeance, meant to show that Steele would make his enemies pay. Proposition C was a naked display of self-interest.
All were geared toward amassing power — and sowing chaos ahead of the May election.
The resulting chaos has destabilized the city enough that voters might actually look for relief now in a new leader. Looking to Brockhouse to assuage this chaos — no matter how “sideways” he claims he now is with Steele — would simply be capitulating to one of its architects.