A Denver City Council member did something extraordinary last week – she disagreed with the mayor.
Good for her.
Perhaps her act of civic defiance will catch on with other spinally deficient Denver City Council members.
Sadly, this time, the councilperson, Carol Boigon, happens to be completely misguided.
Once we sift through the rhetoric, Boigon advocates shifting funding from the city’s reserve fund to raise city employee salaries even further.
These funds are used for Denver’s emergency services to help bolster the city’s all-important bond rating. So, clearly this is exceptionally irresponsible and, no doubt, driven by political motives.
“We want to keep the faith with our employees,” Boigon contended. “The commitment I thought I made was that when times got better, we would return to the marketplace philosophy.”
To begin with, what imaginary “marketplace philosophy” is this woman talking about? Boigon cares about market forces about as much as she cares about fiscal responsibility.
Which nears absolute zero.
There is no true market for civil servant salaries. This doesn’t mean the city shouldn’t do its best to provide fair pay to employees – it should. And Denver does.
In fact, Mayor Hickenlooper has done a commendable job (man, I hate complimenting politicians, even Him) fostering incentives and group-based performance bonuses to make government more efficient.
No, the system isn’t perfect, but it’s far superior to those in most major cities.
Then again, if city employees still believe they are treated unfairly, there’s an escape hatch: Join the private sector. It features plenty of upside, for sure. Though typically there is less job security, fewer sick days and no cushy pensions.
“We do know that our benefits plan is ahead of the market,” says Kelly Brough, Hickenlooper’s chief of staff. “Pension and health care isn’t bad, either. And it’s my understanding that some on the council aren’t looking at those factors. Those things help us recruit and keep employees. Most companies, when you look at it, we match them or we do better.”
According to the city, the average increase in salary for city workers was 5.46 percent in 2006 and expected to be 6.24 percent in 2007 – including individual merit and group bonus pay. Not bad.
Which brings us to an interesting question: How does the city decide what employees should make?
“One part of the equation is that every single year a survey is done in this region in the public/private sector, establishing pay ranges for each position,” says Brough. “It will impact some people. … For some of the classifications, there are bumps in pay increase.”
Staff turnover light
Are you curious as to what happens when the salary in a certain job market drops? City employees must take pay cuts, right? “Market philosophy” and all that?
Hardly.
After added individual merit pay, “the last piece in our salary structure is bonus or incentive pay after employment achievement of goals,” Brough explains. “Typically team- based goals – we’ve only done that for one year.”
One would assume, if pay and benefits were so awful (and with near-historic lows in unemployment rates) there would be a dramatic city employee turnover? Yet retention is strong, especially when compared with most of the private sector.
“We do have a workforce with a lot of baby boomers and people who are a little older and more eligible to retire than most organizations,” she adds. “So we may see more because of the demographics.”
When Denver City Council voted 12-0 to allow Denver residents to vote on a final revamping of the city’s personnel system in 2003, Boigon was the only councilperson missing to give the go-ahead.
Make what you will of it.
But Denver voted yes.
Now, Boigon will need to pull together at least seven votes – maybe nine to override a potential Hickenlooper veto (fun!). Rick Garcia has shown interest. Newly minted union spokesman – I mean councilman – Chris Nevitt is a likely target.
So anything can happen.
And since this is such a dreadful idea, there will be some Denver City Council support. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
David Harsanyi’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 303-954-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com.
