With the largely unspoken potential for a job action during next year’s Democratic National Convention hanging over discussions, Denver police have negotiated a contract that will give them at least a 14 percent salary increase over the next three years.
The contract nearly triples the percentage raise handed out in the last three-year contract, reached in 2004, which so angered the police union that it took the contract to arbitration and lost.
That time around, the city offered a total 5 percent increase: no raise in 2005, 2 percent in 2006 and 3 percent in 2007.
Denver’s Police Protective Association, which represents most of the city’s 1,400 police officers, also negotiated a deal that requires the administration to pay 80% of the increase in the cost of health insurance plans during the term of the contract, beginning in 2008. That’s the same percentage the city currently pays. Those costs have risen at a double-digit pace in recent years.
The raises and health care increases in the new contract will cost the city more than $5 million annually. The city was facing a $30 million budget shortfall even before the contract was negotiated.
Police were voting on the contract Thursday and today, and neither union officials nor city elected leaders would comment for fear of roiling the waters before the deal is formally presented to City Council members.
Some political observers said the contract resulted from Mayor John Hickenlooper’s ticklish political situation. They said Hickenlooper could ill afford labor strife next year, when the Democratic National Convention will come to town.
They added that the police contract would set the tone for pending contract negotiations with other city employees, even as the city faces slumping revenues.
“The city is already shorthanded for the DNC when it comes to police, and given that, the police had a big bargaining chip,” said Democratic power broker and former state Sen. Paul Sandoval.
In 2004, the Boston police union set up picket lines outside the Democratic National Convention to draw attention to a two-year dispute with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. A state-appointed arbitrator ended up awarding Boston officers a 14.5 percent raise over four years, retroactive to 2002.
Sandoval, who has allies and contacts in the police union, said he suspected Denver’s police union used the issue of security during the convention to its advantage in contract negotiations.
“I’m certain the convention was brought up somehow,” Sandoval said. “I’m certain of that.”
Officers also will have to work one week without pay during the three-year contract, but they would receive payment for that week when they retire.
One veteran sergeant at the Police Department, who did not want to be named, said, “They’re not wanting to mess with coppers these days.”
At least one Hickenlooper ally, though, discounted that the potential for labor strife during the convention forced Hickenlooper’s hand.
That person, who did not want to be named because he was not authorized to speak for the administration, said police took a big hit during the last contract, and that an arbitrator would have been less likely to side with the city this time around. An administration official stressed salary surveys showed other police departments were giving their officers better raises than Denver, giving the police union further leverage.
Details of the contract were provided by rank and file officers.
City Council members said that when they were briefed by the administration in closed- door sessions, the issue of labor strife during the convention was never brought up.
“Each negotiation is unique and has to factor in everything that’s going on in the city, and the Police Department has certainly been more productive in the past three years,” said Cole Finegan, Hickenlooper’s former city attorney and former chief of staff, now in private practice.
The contract negotiations in Denver occurred as revenue projections for the city continue to slip.
Deputy budget director Ed Scholz said this month that increasing costs and underperforming revenues left the city $30 million behind for next year.
Hickenlooper recently sent a memorandum to the directors of each department asking them to prepare budgets for lower-than- expected growth to make up the difference.
Councilman Doug Linkhart said the police contract could have other ramifications since it likely will set the tone for what the other unions involved in collective bargaining will want. Negotiations have not yet concluded for the unions representing employees of the Sheriff Department and the Fire Department.
Linkhart added that career-service employees in other city departments don’t have collective bargaining but that morale will dip if their raises aren’t in line with what the police are getting.
“The first round of negotiations often set the tone for future negotiations,” Linkhart said. “It’s a problem from a budget standpoint.”
Staff writer Christopher N. Osher can be reached at 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com.
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to inaccurate information supplied to The Denver Post, it contained an inaccurate description of the health care plan in the new labor contract negotiated with Denver police officers. The city will pay 80 percent of any increase in premiums, the same percentage the city currently pays.
