Union takes up cause of city worker placed on leave

Dan Kulin

Wednesday, March 9, 2005 | 9:16 a.m.

Las Vegas' largest city employees' union is fighting the decision to put a Municipal Court secretary on unpaid leave because she is a candidate for municipal judge in North Las Vegas.

Union leaders say the city ordinance being applied to the case violates their contract because it was not a negotiated change to the work rules, and also could infringe upon secretary Marcia Daines' constitutional rights.

The grievance filed Tuesday by the Las Vegas City Employees' Association asks that Daines be allowed to return to work and receive back pay for the time she has missed. The grievance will first go to City Manager Doug Selby, and if he does not side with the union, the matter will go to an arbitrator sometime around June or July, association attorney Bruce Snyder said.

Las Vegas is the only local government that forces employees to take unpaid leave if they run for political office outside the city they work for. The rule is part of an ordinance adopted in September in the wake of the Wendell Williams incident, and it also requires city employees elected to the state Legislature take unpaid leave while the Legislature is in session.

Williams was a Democratic assemblyman and employee in the city Neighborhood Services Department. He received thousands of dollars in city pay while he was serving in the 2003 Legislature. Since then, Williams was fired by the city and lost his re-election bid.

Daines was the first city employee forced to take leave under the ordinance. The union is taking up her case even though she is not a member of the union because the ordinance affects their members too. The association represents about 1,500 of the city's roughly 2,600 employees.

"We know it was a knee-jerk reaction to Wendell Williams," association President Tommy Ricketts said of the ordinance. "But it's a violation of our contract."

The grievance claims the ordinance was not adequately noticed, that Daines was not allowed to use her paid annual leave and placing her on unpaid leave is equivalent to disciplining her, and that the union's contract is in conflict with the ordinance.

Snyder said the ordinance should have been brought to the association before it was adopted because it institutes a policy affecting city workers.

Snyder said if the ordinance is allowed to stand, then the City Council could overturn all the provisions in the union contract by passing new laws.

"It's like the contract doesn't matter," Ricketts said.

Las Vegas Councilman Gary Reese would not comment on Daines' situation or the grievance but said the ordinance was important because it set clear rules for employees running for elected office.

Reese said the demands of running a campaign are so much that a candidate can't run for office and hold down a full-time job without some mingling of the time spent doing both.

"When you're in a campaign, you're taking phone calls during the day and leaving early or coming in late," Reese said. "It's just not fair to the rest of the city employees. It's a time issue."

But Ricketts and Snyder said they would rather see a city rule that would allow an employee to take vacation time while running for office. Ricketts also said that people could do their campaigning before or after work.

Snyder said Daines could also have federal legal claims involving her rights to due process, she was placed on unpaid leave without a hearing, and her right to seek elected office.

Daines said she just wants to get back to work as a secretary in the administrative services division of Municipal Court, where she makes $58,475 a year. She has worked for the city since October 1979 and was put on unpaid leave on Feb. 23.

"I have been doing nothing except getting more depressed. It's like I'm in a twilight zone, I'm not a candidate and I'm not working," Daines said.

Daines' run-in with the city ordinance is the result of her filing to run for judge of North Las Vegas' newly created second Municipal Court. Daines tried to withdraw from the election, but missed the deadline to remove her name from the ballot.

She has also said she will not actively campaign for the position, which would pay $128,000 a year, and so she does not consider herself a candidate.

But city officials disagreed, citing a portion of the ordinance, which states, "No public employee shall be eligible for any form of paid compensation while running for a political office or during active service as an elected official."

The other candidates for judge that will appear on the ballot with Daines are Willia Chaney, Sean Hoeffgen, Christopher Larotonda, Robert Nelson-Kortland and Keith Buck, whose wife, Shari Buck, is a North Las Vegas councilwoman. The candidates will face off in the April 5 primary. Early voting is from March 19 to April 1.