Friday, Jan. 16, 2004 | 9:44 a.m.
Las Vegas wants to change a portion of its contract with the firefighters union that allows the fire chief to grant paid time off to members performing union business.
The move follows a newspaper report that the vice president of the state firefighters union, Raymond McAllister, who also is a Las Vegas firefighter, received about half his pay, $33,000, while performing union duties, largely time spent lobbying in the Legislature.
The union would be allotted a specific amount of time, instead of leaving it to the discretion of Fire Chief David Washington, and members would have to work within those limits.
"From my perspective and the authority I have, I still feel comfortable with what I did," Washington said. "In retrospect, we'll sit down with labor and use the model Metro (Police) has, we give them so many shifts and they use it at their discretion and take me out of the loop."
Deputy City Manager Betsy Fretwell said the provision that allows union members to be paid by the city while they conduct union business has been in the contract for at least 25 years.
"My understanding is we're not the only ones who have this provision," Fretwell said. "Some of the other ones are far more definitive about the amount of time that can be used."
Washington said that whether he grants the leave or union officials take leave based on pre-allocated time, the officials cannot come and go as they please. The contract specifies that only about 16 people can be off at a time in the 557-member department, and union time must be coordinated within the greater schedule.
Washington said it's a give-and-take that always has worked.
"I've never given them all the administrative leave they request," Washington said. "We always talk about, well, maybe if you guys would do with one less person, and we've always worked these things out for each other, and it's never been a big deal."
Allowing McAllister to spend time in the Legislature meant the city had to pay other captains about $50,000 in overtime to cover his shifts. Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman spoke against the practice during his news conference Thursday and argued that it showed the need again for a strong mayor system, in which the mayor would serve as the chief executive for the city.
By law the mayor is little more than an at-large council member, but Goodman has proven adept at using the bully pulpit of the mayor to set goals for the city as a whole, most notably his ideas for downtown, which have been adopted, at least publicly, by the rest of council. But the day-to-day operations of the city are handled by City Manager Doug Selby.
Goodman Thursday said, "We have a lot of work to do with what's happening up in Carson City with city employees," a reference to the recent struggles the city has had dealing with the fallout from the Neighborhood Services Department controversy over employees who were state legislators being paid by both.
The department's former director, Sharon Segerblom, was demoted and reassigned, and former administrative officer Wendell Williams, an assemblyman, was fired, after a city report concluded that Williams received municipal pay he should not have while serving in the 2003 Legislature and that Segerblom failed to properly supervise him.
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