Columnist Jeff German: County police deal still not locked up

Thursday, Oct. 6, 2005 | 8:17 a.m.

eff German's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday in the Sun. R' each him at 259-4067 or german@lasvegassun.com.

If you follow local government long enough, eventually you're going to see a political fight that packs the punch of a heavyweight championship.

In Corner No. 1 is Sheriff Bill Young, one of the more popular elected officials in town, and the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, the influential union that represents 2,400 local cops.

In Corner No. 2 is County Manager Thom Reilly, one of the most powerful men in Southern Nevada, and the majority of his seven-member County Commission, which does well in its own right on the political power meter.

They are fighting over terms of a tentative four-year collective bargaining agreement reached between the cops and Metro Police Department last week. It's an agreement the union says is "fair," but the county insists is too lucrative for the public's pocketbook.

As I reported last week, the police department got the go-ahead to negotiate the deal from the Metro Fiscal Affairs Committee, a five-member panel of mostly elected city and county officials who oversee the police budget.

But this week Reilly and his allies on the County Commission, which funds 70 percent of the police budget, appear determined to scuttle the agreement.

With larger-scale employee talks on the horizon, they want a fact-finder to independently evaluate the fiscal impact of the contract on the county. They're in no rush to give away the farm.

For Young, however, it's important to get this deal ratified by the union membership and then approved by the Fiscal Affairs Committee before he heads into his re-election next year. He doesn't want to run into angry cops on the campaign trail.

This is probably why Young, who technically should be on the side of management, is backing the troops.

But in his haste, Reilly says, the sheriff, with the help of the PPA, took advantage of the Fiscal Affairs Committee and did an "end run" around the majority of county commissioners, who don't favor handing out such a fat contract.

The agreement calls for a 25.6 percent hike in wages and benefits over the next four years, far above the overall 17 percent the cops got last time.

It's also more than the 15 percent increase county firefighters got in their last contract and the 13.5 percent received by the thousands of county employees represented by the Service Employees International Union.

"At this point there are concerns about the percentage," Reilly says. "It is a departure from every other percentage we've given. I don't know that we've ever given this large of an increase."

Young is on vacation this week, but his right-hand man, Undersheriff Doug Gillespie, tells me the department isn't backing away from the agreement. City officials, according to Councilman Gary Reese, who's on the Fiscal Affairs Committee, also are "comfortable" with the deal.

And at least one combatant, Dave Kallas, the PPA's executive director, isn't holding back any punches.

"I think it's a real shame that we have people at the county saying the sheriff and the PPA ran an end run around them," Kallas says. "All of us are officers. We work within the rules. Just because they're not happy with the results, it doesn't mean we did anything wrong."

Kallas says the agreement only looks expensive because it includes significant increases in health insurance benefits to bring the cops closer to the level of benefits already received by firefighters and other county employees.

He says he finds it "ironic" that county staffers, some of whom make $200,000 a year, are whining about the agreement.

Then he adds:

"We would be happy at any time to switch jobs if they had the courage to do the work our officers do."