Columnist Jeff German: The battle over Metro’s contract has become unnecessary

Friday, Oct. 21, 2005 | 8:11 a.m.

Jeff German's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067.

In the 32-year history of the consolidated Metro Police Department, there has never been such contentiousness over contract talks with the cops who put their lives on the line every day.

That's because elected officials recognized the value of having a strong and happy police force in a fast-growing city that thrives on tourism.

Officials even were willing on occasion to give the cops a little more than other public employees out of deference to the hazards officers face.

The County Commission, which thinks the just-reached tentative police contract is too lucrative, broke that tradition with some unprecedented political skullduggery this week, ensuring more animosity on the labor front in the coming weeks.

By removing Commissioner Tom Collins, who supports the contract, from the Metro Fiscal Affairs Committee, the commission set the stage for the five-member oversight panel to reject the proposed contract on Monday with some 2,400 officers.

If that happens, Sheriff Bill Young says, it will cause the police department to go through the stressful fact-finding and arbitration process for the first time ever.

"I don't like this process," Young says. "It's not the way to settle a government employee contract. It takes away the negotiating process."

More than that, the sheriff says, "It creates an environment where there's a lot of angst."

That's exactly what you don't want on a police force that's supposed to be focused on protecting the community.

But it's the direction we're heading, and we can thank the County Commission for it.

"They talk a good game about how much they appreciate law enforcement officers," says political consultant Kent Oram, who works closely with the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, which represents the cops. "But when it comes down to it, they don't put their money where their mouths are.

"They have no clue as to how tough the cops' job is."

Oram says that, if every county commissioner spent a week in a squad car, especially during the high-crime hours of midnight to 4 a.m., to see what officers go through, they'd back the pay raise for the cops in a "New York minute."

What irks Dave Kallas, the PPA's executive director, is that this failure to support the officers comes amid well-known cases of county mismanagement that have cost taxpayers millions of dollars -- far more than the cost of the four-year police contract.

The over-budgeted Regional Justice Center, financial troubles at University Medical Center and failure to collect $61 million in Justice Court traffic fines are some of the more publicized examples.

"They've lost millions of dollars, and they're trying to make up for the loss of these revenues on the backs of the officers I represent," Kallas says.

Commission Chairman Rory Reid, who's replacing Collins on the Fiscal Affairs Committee, doesn't want to talk about the past.

"I'm pretty new to this job," he says. "My responsibility isn't to the past, but to the future.

"We haven't said no. We've said the police deserve to be well compensated, but we have to make that decision in the context of the county's fiscal needs."

To the police, however, that's as good as a no.

Young has tried to broker a compromise behind the scenes, but so far he has come up short.

If forced to go through arbitration, Young says, officers probably will have to wait until July for a new contract.

So will some 450 sergeants, lieutenants and captains who belong to the Police Managers and Supervisors Association. They won't negotiate until they know what the PPA members are getting.

Eight months is a long time for the community to have to put up with unhappy officers on the street.

And it's all so unnecessary.

"I hate to see politics get in the way of the public's safety," Young says.