Detroit Police Union Official Says Recent Cuts Make Streets Unsafe, But Police and Fire Department Salaries Increased
Other Detroit city workers took cuts
Detroit Police Officer Association Attorney Donato Iorio made national news recently when he said it wasn’t safe to enter the city due to staffing reductions in the police department. He said officers can’t afford to stay in Detroit and are leaving due to low pay.
However, city of Detroit financial records show that costs for the Detroit police and firefighter departments are mounting at a time all other departments are cutting costs.
Lorio disputes the city’s financial report, saying the city's top police officers make a base pay of $47,000 and haven’t received any benefit or wage increases since 2008.
Yet according to city documents, police and fire department employees saw their salaries and wages increase by $13.3 million between 2010 and 2011. The city had an overall net decrease in salary and wages of $15.3 million for the rest of its employees for the same period, according the the city of Detroit's 2011 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.
The police and fire increases in gross salaries came despite a 2.5 percent drop in full-time employees in the "Public Protection" department, which includes police and fire. The number of full-time equivalent employees in Public Protection dropped from 4,643 in 2010 to 4,525 in 2011.
Pension costs for police and fire union employees jumped $60.4 million in 2011 compared to the previous year, according to city documents. The increase was mainly due to higher contribution rates by the city due to poor market performance of pension fund assets, the report said.
The city’s report on overall salaries and wages includes overtime. Police and fire departments traditionally have triggered large amounts of overtime during staff reductions, although it is unclear if that is what happened in Detroit.
Lorio said the city of Detroit poorly documents overtime so it is difficult to analyze if that was the case for the increase.
"We have officers who in order to make ends meet have to collect pop bottles," Iorio said. "It's shameful."
Mayor Dave Bing’s Spokesman Anthony Neely didn’t reply to requests for comment.
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.
Prop 5: Protecting Taxpayers from the Government
(Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted and abridged from the text of a speech delivered by Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative for the Mackinac Center, to various groups around the state about the ballot proposals on the Nov. 6 ballot. We'll post one part each day this week explaining Proposals 1 through 5.)
Monday: Proposal 1 a Referendum on PA 4
Tuesday: Proposal 2: More Power for Government Unions
Wednesday: Proposal 3 Would Cost Taxpayers Billions
Thursday: Prop 4 Would Put Union Scam in Constitution
Proposal 5 is arguably the most straightforward of all the proposals on the Nov. 6 ballot.
A "yes" vote would mandate that any vote to raise state taxes in Michigan be approved with a two-thirds vote of the Legislature. This supermajority mandate is commonly known as a Tax Limitation Amendment and some 17 states have them.
The idea behind a Tax Limitation Amendment is to make it more difficult for the political class to pilfer the pockets of taxpayers. Research — most notably by scholar Mancur Olson — has shown time and again that in democratic nations the wishes of an electorate are often ignored by narrow special interests that seek costly "favors" from the government. Politicians all too frequently accommodate those favors (be they subsidies or tariffs or spending hikes or other items) in part because their contributors and powerful constituents support them. Increasing taxes also is often a path of least resistance.
Constitutional restrictions are an effective way to handcuff politicians and stymie the special interests who lobby them for more money. Academic research on balance seems to show that such restrictions do check the growth of government and tax burdens, too.
Backers of the proposal — from the Michigan Alliance for Prosperity — have argued that tax burdens are 8 percent to 23 percent lower in states with such protections compared to those without.
Opponents argue that it should not be so difficult to raise taxes to fund important government services, but such an argument fails to consider cutting unnecessary spending. Do governments really need to continue providing hyper-generous fringe benefits to public employees?
In Michigan, the state does not need to raise taxes because there is plenty of room to cut without gutting programs or laying off employees. The Mackinac Center has long demonstrated more than $5 billion in possible savings from simply benchmarking public sector fringe benefit packages to private sector averages.
This proposal may not be perfect, but on net balance a yes vote would raise Michigan's taxpayer protections to a new level.
A "no" vote keeps the status quo intact.
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.
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