The threat of an unfair labor practice complaint against City Council for potential cuts made to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office looms as the Council Finance Committee meets today with the final budget facing a vote Sept. 27.
Fraternal Order of Police President Nelson Cuba said Friday he would attend today’s Finance Committee meeting to explain the potential legal ramifications of the committee’s actions should it not restore funding to the sheriff’s office.
Given that the budget is not on the agenda and there are no public hearings scheduled, he might not have the chance.
Finance Committee Chairman Richard Clark said if Cuba sought to address the committee on the issue, he would be denied.
“No,” said Clark.
Cuba said Friday that a proposed $4.4 million cut to the sheriff’s office budget by the Finance Committee affects negotiations between the City and police union.
“If you don’t put those dollars back in, then we will also file an unfair labor practice against the Council because you cannot negotiate in good faith if you already cut the money out before you have any concessions,” Cuba said Friday. “That’s always an issue.”
Cuba and the union filed an unfair labor practice complaint late last week against Sheriff John Rutherford.
They said Rutherford personally solicited members of the bargaining unit by telling officers they needed to take a 2 percent pay cut to avoid departmental layoffs. They said Rutherford was attempting to convince officers to turn against union leadership.
The committee cut the sheriff’s office budget by $4.4 million, placing $2.2 million in a contingency account for later use by the office. The other $2.2 million was absorbed into a Council contingency fund that allocated $3.9 million toward financing road repaving in a pay-as-you-go method instead of relying on the banking fund and accumulating debt.
Cuba told reporters Friday that police officers would do their part in the budget shortfall if the City could prove there was a gap in its budget, but an action like the road repaving was instead “another pet project of theirs.”
“That’s why it makes it so hard to be able to get these officers to agree to make any type of concession when they see what the City is doing with these dollars,” said Cuba.
The entire cut, Cuba said, should be placed into a contingency fund as it has in the past.
Clark said Monday that cuts took place in every department across the City and those imposed on the sheriff’s office were no different.
“They (cuts) have nothing to do with negotiations between the City and (police) union,” he said. “We are in our budget process.”
When discussing the cuts during the budget hearings throughout August, Clark and other Finance Committee members issued overall budget-cut amounts to departments, but did not specify where the cuts had to come within each department.
Labor attorney and former Council member Jack Webb said Monday he doesn’t think union negotiations and the Council budget process should be linked.
Webb, who served as Council president last year, said it appeared the cuts “had nothing to do with salary or benefits.”
Stating an overall amount for a cut, instead of specific cuts within a department, would help the Council in a potential unfair labor practice charge, he said.
Cuba said Friday he had talked to numerous Council members regarding the cuts and several were “willing to put some amendment in to put those dollars back.”
Clark said he hasn’t been one of them.
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