Tax Increases and the Most Dangerous Occupations

A few years ago I looked at the U.S. Department of Labor  statistics on the ten most dangerous occupations for 2012. I have listed those ten in the box above plus the statistics for firefighters, who didn't make the top ten and is far down the list of the most dangerous occupations at 1.7 percent fatalities per 100,000 firefighters. This is not to say that firefighting is a safe occupation. Even if relatively few of them ever die in the line of of duty, we all sleep better knowing that someone is on duty at Portsmouth firehouses 24 hours, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. But the last Portsmouth firefighter to die in the line of duty, if I am not mistaken, was David Kehoe, eighty-three years ago, in 1932.

The minimum number of employees in the Portsmouth police and fire departments is dictated by the city charter. Since a charter is to a city what a constitution is to a state and nation, I don’t think it is appropriate for the minimum size of any city department to be permanently set in cement in the charter, any more than the minimum number of soldiers and sailors should be fixed permanently in an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  City officials have kowtowed to municipal unions in the past because they knew they would  probably not be re-elected if they didn’t.

Firefighters are essential to the safety of any city, as trash collectors are to health of any city. If you look at the box above, you will see that the fatality rate nationally for trash collectors was the fourth highest for all occupations in the United States and was at least sixteen times more dangerous than firefighting. But trash collectors were paid nationally some $12,000 less annually than firefighters, and in Portsmouth the city  used to go to extraordinary lengths  to avoid paying trash collectors overtime by changing the day of pickup after most holidays, which I had trouble keeping straight as did many other residents in the city. Since the city manager has been on the job, that bizarre collection schedule has thankfully  been scrapped.

The amendment dictating a minimum number of firefighters at 44 is in the charter because the Fire Department was the most politically active of all city employees and when an issue was on the ballot that they favored they were out ringing doorbells throughout the city in their dress uniforms campaigning for one tax increase or another as they presumably  did back when the charter amendment dictating a minimum number of firefighters was on the ballot and as they did again in 2011 in the so-called Safety Levy. Section 82 of the City Charter prohibits those  who hold a place in city government from taking part in political campaigns, which it appears the Fire Chief has violated in the past, allowing members of his department to participate as a group in political campaigns for and against issues on the ballot. Members of the Fire Department  have the right like all citizens to express their opinions and vote on issues, as individuals, but they should not have the right as a group to campaign throughout the city, including in the senior citizen complexes, such as Hill View. In the past, the  Fire Department, in my opinion,  has used scare tactics to influence the vote on ballot measures. I have written about those scare tactics in a past post on River Vices (click here).

Somebody who knows the workings of the city government better than I do has told me the biggest argument against the increase in the income tax is the lack of any restrictions on its use.  "If the tax increase were to provide  funds for street repair, infrastructure up-grades, or other specific limitations it would be more palatable. But the way the ballot is written the tax can be used for whatever City Council decides to use it for.  They will have no incentive to reduce the outlandish fringe benefits being paid to city employees, including first dollar health insurance coverage costing nearly $20,000 which very few individuals can afford.  Fully paid pensions are another perk which the average worker does not have. Taxpayers foot the bill for both the employee and employer share of the Ohio Pension cost. Excessive overtime is paid in certain departments who have learned to play the system to create significant additional overtime in addition to their regular salary. Giving our city council this additional money is like giving alcohol to a drunken sailor.  They have demonstrated no willingness to reduce the cost of city government other than threatening to reduce service."

Former mayor Jane Murray has just made a post (click here) on the tax proposal on the ballot, urging electors  to VOTE NO on the issue.

The Hill View Flyer [reposted]

The budget-busting sentence from Sect. 87 of City Charter. The same
language is used in Sect. 89 covering the Fire Dept.

The article below was originally posted on May 5, 2011. Because our new city manager was not around three years ago to read it, I am reposting it so that our un-elected city manager can continue his on-the-job training. He recently complained about the difficulties of trying to balance the budget when the number of employees of both the Fire and Police departments are dictated by the city charter, as if no one had read the city charter before.  A city manager has even less authority than the mayor under the previous system of city government had of changing that onerous provision of the charter. We are stuck with that provision and the city manager form of government, and for that we have the officious First Ward councilman Kevin Johnson to thank. R.F.

The Hill View Flyer: “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics!”

 The flyer (shown above ) appeared in the mailboxes of residents at the Hill View Retirement Center not long before they voted on May 3, 2011,  on a proposed  city income tax increase. The  purpose of the flyer, in my reading of it, was not so much to inform the residents on the proposed income tax increase as it was to scare the bejesus out of them. If it did not do that with what Mark Twain called “lies, damned lies, and statistics,” then it did it with at least some very misleading “talking points.”

  

Talking Point #1: The Title

The scare tactics begin with the typography of the title of the flyer, “Talking Points for the Police and Fire Levy.” The  flyer’s title is  not only in larger type, it is  bolded, italicized, and underlined. Typographically, the title  looks alarming. If you did it justice, when you read it aloud you would make it sound like a three-alarm fire. The title is designed to get the attention of the seniors at Hill View by all typographical means. In addition, the title is semantically misleading. Instead of calling a spade a spade, it calls it a heart. Instead of calling the proposed city income tax increase a tax increase, it calls it a  “Police and Fire levy.” “Levy” sounds so much less onerous than  “tax,” and mentioning  the  “Police and Fire” in  the title introduces the issue of the  Hill View residents’ safety. The purpose of the title  may have been to alarm  the  residents of Hill View  about crime and fire. The purpose of the flyer itself may have been to get the residents to vote for the levy as a way of protecting themselves against fire.

 Talking Point #2

“2.8 Million Dollars will be raised yearly by the levy and directly fund the Police and Fire 5.5 year Levy.” Instead of being a damned lie, this  talking point  is a statistic, a misleading statistic.  How much will be raised yearly by the increased income tax depends upon the economy, both nationally and locally. The worse the economy, the fewer the jobs, and the lower the revenue from the Portsmouth city income tax will be. Even when the national economy was booming, prior to the current Great Recession, Portsmouth remained in the same economic doldrums that it had been in for at least a quarter century.  Will the economy be better in the future? Probably  not.  In keeping with the aims of the backers of the city income tax increase,  the projected  2.8 million figure is probably inflated, or “Trented,” to coin a word, assuming City Auditor Trent Williams  had anything to do with  the projection.  In the five and one-half year life span of the 2 percent tax, the annual amount will vary, at best, and for the next couple of  years at least is  likely to fall below the $2.8 million projection. And will the tax really end in five and a half years? And will Peter Rabbit stay out of Mr. McGregor's garden?

Talking Point #3

“6/10 percent increase, 1.4 percent now, brings us to 2.0%, New Boston is at 2.5” 
Talking Point #3, like Talking Point #2, shows it is possible to mislead, if not lie, with statistics. What this  cryptic talking point is saying  is, “The  0.6 percent proposed Portsmouth income tax increase is small, and even when it is added to the city’s current 1.4 percent rate it only takes us up to 2 percent, which is still a lot less than the  2.5 percent income tax rate of neighboring New Boston.”  What this talking point does not say is that the 2.5% income tax rate was one of the money-raising responses the  village of New Boston  made in response to the fiscal crisis it faced when the steel and coke plants closed. But New Boston not only raised its income tax, it seriously cut the costs of its government.  New Boston laid off  public  employees, including police and firefighters, but Portsmouth has not.  If comparisons of income tax rates between Portsmouth and  other Ohio cities are relevant, then it is misleading to compare Portsmouth (pop. 20,000) to  New Boston (pop. 2000) as it would be to compare Portsmouth  to Columbus (pop. 787, 000), the state’s  largest city. Yes, both New Boston and Columbus  have 2.5% income tax rates, but it makes more sense to compare Portsmouth not with villages and metropolises but with mid-sized and small Ohio cities, most of which have  income tax rates below  2%, such as  Jackson (0%); Ironton (1%);  Piketon (1%); Waverly (1%); South Bloomfield (1%); Findlay (1.25%); Ashland (1.5%); Circleville  (1.5%);  Lima (1.5%); Chillicothe (1.6%); Marion (1.75%); and Delaware (1.85%).  As for a neighboring city in a neighboring state, Ashland, Kentucky, has close to the same population (22,000) and close to the same income tax rate (1.5%) as Portsmouth (1.4%).

Talking Point #4

“If [the levy] passes funds will establish the re-opening of Company 3.” 
This talking point says that passage of the income tax increase will enable the fire department to reopen the Company 3 Hilltop station. If the levy passes the station probably will reopen. But what this talking point does not say is that it was the Fire Department itself, after discussing the matter with Mayor-unelect David Malone, who made the decision to close the Hilltop station. “That is the decision myself and the Mayor (David Malone) agreed on in trying to comply with Council’s demand we cut 20 percent out of the budget,” Portsmouth Fire Chief Bill Raison told the Portsmouth Daily Times (3/11/11). The City Council had directed the mayor to cut the Fire Department budget by 20%, but such a sizeable cut would have required financial concessions by the fire fighters that they were not willing to make. Instead of layoffs, furloughs and other concessions, the Fire Department closed the Hilltop Station. The Fire Department had a choice: make financial concessions to ease the budgetary crisis or jeopardize the safety of those who live in the Hilltop area by closing the Hilltop station. They chose to jeopardize the safety of those in the Hilltop area by closing the Hilltop station. Is it possible, furthermore,  that the Hilltop station was closed by the Fire Department because it could then be raised as a safety  issue by firefighters in the door-to-door campaign they waged prior to the May 3rd primary? The flyer itself, assuming the Fire Department had something to do with its creation, is evidence of the department's dishonorable intentions. 

Talking Point #5

“If it [the levy] passes funds will increase manpower (2 currently retired and not filled, 1 projected).” 
To try to meet the  20% budget reduction set by the council, the Fire Department agreed that three retiring members would not be replaced. But Talking Point #5  promises to restore those three eliminated positions if  the levy is passed. If the residents vote for the levy and the positions are restored, the residents would get increased protection from fires and they would be getting it free, because they would not be paying any city income tax. The people who have jobs in  Portsmouth will be the ones  paying for the additional fire protection for the residents at  Hill View, who will be paying nothing.  (See Talking Point #7, below.)

Talking Point #6

“$50,000.00 yearly income                   $25,000 yearly income

            $300.00 increase yearly                         $150.00 increase yearly

              $23.00 increase monthly                       $11.50 increase monthly

                                $00.83 increase daily                            $00.42 increase daily”  

   

Talking Point #6 uses statistics to suggest that the income tax increase will cost wage earners relatively little, but it does so by calculating only the increase, without saying what the total city income tax for an individual wage earner would be. For someone in Portsmouth earning $25,000 a year, the total city income tax would be $500, not $150, and for someone earning $50,000, it would be $1,000 a year, not $300, which is not small change, even to someone earning $50,000 a year. But how many people working in Portsmouth, outside of the city government, make $50,000 a year? The estimated median income in Portsmouth in 2009 was not $50,000, and it was not even $25,000: it was $20,909. If the city was the only entity  that wage earners had to pay taxes to, that would be one thing, but they also have to pay state and federal income taxes as well as  property taxes to the county (of which the city gets a cut) if they are home owners.

Talking Point #7

 “Fixed income residents will not be affected (Social Security, Retirements, Disabled).” 
As an indication of its importance, Talking Point #7, like the flyer’s title,  is bolded, italicized, and  underlined. Why? Because it is a reminder to Hill View residents that if they vote for the levy and it passes they will not have to pay for it.  This talking point reassures Hill View residents that, though  raising the city income tax will benefit them in terms of increased fire protection,  that increased protection  will cost them nothing. This talking point is factually accurate but morally questionable. Should Hill View residents get the benefits of increased fire protection without having to pay for it? Should someone who has a job in Portsmouth that pays $25,000  but who lives out of the city have to pay $500 a year to reopen the Hilltop station to provide  increased protection for the residents of Hill View, a high end retirement community that people live in by choice? And it is not just those earning $25,000 who would have to pay 2% of their pay to provide additional protection for the residents of Hill View. So would those working at McDonald’s earning not much more than half that. A cashier at McDonald’s makes about $16,000 a year and a crew member even less.

  

Talking Point #8

The statistics cited in Talking Point #8  may have been intended not just to inform but also to scare, as mentioned earlier in Talking Point #6.  Even if the statistics are  not misleading (and I would argue some of them are), they are tied to the closing of the Hilltop station, on 17th Street, which the Fire Department itself decided to do. If the firefighters had been willing to pay a higher percentage of their health benefits, pensions   and forgo cost of living increases, it probably would have been possible to the keep the Hilltop station open and the statistics shown above would not apply to Hill View residents. Am I being cynical in thinking the Fire Department may have closed the Hilltop station partly to provide statistics that  could be used to frighten  Hill View residents into voting for the city income tax increase?

Was the closing of the Hilltop Fire Station calculated to scare the hell out of Hill View residents? 

Talking Point #9

“Population: No Decrease since 1987. As per the 2009  Census, Portsmouth population was  20,354.” 
Talking Point #9 is not just misleading, it is dead wrong.  Census records show there has not been a decade since 1930 that the population of Portsmouth has increased or even held its own. Since 1930, Portsmouth has steadily lost more than half its population. The assertion that there has been no decline since 1987 is not true. Why does the Hill View flyer make a  false claim about Portsmouth’s population not decreasing?  The flyer is apparently  trying  dispel  the common sense notion that a city that has lost half its population in the last eighty years probably  needs less, not more, firefighters. It would be useful for purposes of comparison  to know how many firefighters there were in the Portsmouth Fire Department in 1930, when the population was  about 42,000,  or  how many there were in 1950, when the population was about  37,000.  Has  the Fire Department increased in number as the population has  decreased?  I don’t know, but I do know from census records that the population has shrunk drastically. As for the claim that there has been no decrease in population since 1987, census figures show there were 25,993 in 1980; 22,676 in 1990; 20,909 in 2000; and about 20,000 in 2010. That is a loss of about  6,000 people in the last four decades. 1987 was no exception to the rule that Portsmouth has been in a steady population decline for a long time. 

Insulation, Solicitation, Obfuscation

On May 4th, the day after the primary, I emailed John Prose, the CEO of Hill View, asking him about the flyers and about reports I heard  that two members of the Fire Department had spoken to Hill View residents on the eve of  the voting on the income tax increase. I suspected there might be some connection between the flyers and the appearance of the two firemen. Mr. Prose replied promptly to my email, but instead of  an explanation, he responded with an  obfuscation. To obfuscate is to be evasive, unclear, or intentionally confusing. Obfuscating  is something politicians routinely do in responding to questions they don’t want to answer. So it is still a mystery to me, and to some residents,  how the flyers got into  the Hill View mailboxes. Under U.S. Code for crimes and criminal procedure (Chapter 83, Title 18, Section 1725), it is unlawful for anything, including political flyers, to be put in mailboxes if it  lacks U.S. postage and has not gone through a U.S. post office. The law stipulates that nothing should be put in, on, taped, or tied to mailboxes. Fines may be as high as $5,000 for each violation for an individual and $10,000 for an organization.

I am told Hill View has a policy of not allowing  political solicitation or the circulation of petitions. But it appears that  policy is not being administered equitably. When he was councilman for Ward 3, Bob Mollette told me he more than once was denied permission to speak to Hill View residents, even though he was their elected representative. Why then would two members of the Fire Department be allowed to speak to Hill View residents on the eve of the primary in which the  so-called “Police and Fire Levy” was on the ballot? Prior to the recall election of Jane Murray, Mr. Prose distributed a letter to Hill View residents that seemed to me clearly political in nature. I wonder if those managing senior housing centers in Portsmouth have an obligation  to perform like those late nineteenth-century political ward heelers who influenced immigrants to vote for candidates approved by the party bosses. 

“Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” That’s what politics in America often boils down to, and nowhere more than in Portsmouth, as the Hill View flyer may illustrate.

Public Employee Unions: the Democrats’ Achilles’ Heel?

Masthead of the International Association of Firefighters, of which the Portsmouth Fire Dept. is Local 512

Governor Scott Walker’s win in the Wisconsin recall election on  June 5th reflects the serious problem  public sector unions pose for Democrats and for private sector unions as well. Walker announced a year ago that he would attempt to reduce Wisconsin’s $137 million deficit by, along with other measures, denying collective bargaining rights to  public employees and requiring them to pay more for their health insurance and pensions, because the cost of those contributed heavily to the deficit. I’m not an  authority on the budget crisis in Wisconsin,  but I do know something about the budget crisis in Portsmouth. I venture to say that  the financial crisis in our fair city is partly  the result of who the public sector unions negotiate contracts with: namely, the politicians, the elected public officials who know they  will not be reelected if they alienate  public employees by hard-nosed bargaining with their unions. The biggest incentive Portsmouth politicians have is saving  their own skin rather than the taxpayers’ money. They want above all to get reelected and put off competing in the private sector where most of them have  failed miserably.  Three of the current holders of public office—the unelected mayor David Malone, the president of city council, John Haas, whom the charter designates as next in line to be mayor, and councilman Jim Kalb, a former mayor—all three of these jokers mishandled their personal finances so badly that they ended up declaring  bankruptcy (click here). These bankrupts mishandled their finances as badly as Rick Duncan does the city’s waste water. They claim to know how to negotiate with public employee unions on behalf of the taxpayers. Heaven help us!

Firefighter Anonymous

The public sector union representing the Portsmouth Fire Department has been especially adept at taking advantage of Portsmouth’s incompetent and dimwitted politicians. Late in 2011, the firefighter’s union, Local 512 of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), was rumored to be asking for a 12.5 percent increase over the life of the next contract, and asking for that increase in spite the city and the country being in  greatest financial crisis  since the Great Depression. There are those who say the Portsmouth Daily Times has changed its spots, that it is no longer the mouthpiece of the corrupt clique that controls Portsmouth economically and politically. But on 11 November 2011 the PDT played its familiar game of pretending to be impartial when in reality it was doing its usual dirty work. I refer to Frank Lewis allowing a member of the Fire Department to anonymously express his biased views on the contract negotiations between Local 512 and the city. Just as the PDT now allows anyone, like the ubiquitous crackpot “A Citizen,”  to post comments anonymously in response to stories in the PDT, this Anonymous Firefighter was allowed to present to PDT’s dwindling readership, without challenges or questions, Local 512’s case for the extravagant 12.5 percent pay increase they were seeking.   What the Anonymous Firefighter argued was that a 12.5 percent increase was chicken feed and could hardly make up for the financial sacrifices the firefighters had made and were still willing to continue making in the contract being negotiated.  “Our [pay]checks were actually going backwards with the 12.5 percent increase,” the Anonymous Firefighter told Lewis. The Anonymous Firefighter implied Local 512 would have had to ask for a lot more than 12.5 percent to make up for the financial sacrifices the firefighters had already made, such as foregoing the cash payments they received for unused sick days and accepting less of an annual allowance for clothing, which if I recall correctly they previously were able also take a cash payment for if they didn’t purchase new clothing. 

Mayor un-elect Malone

The firefighters didn’t get the 12.5 percent increase. They got instead the so-called Safety Levy (i.e., tax increase), the income from which was specifically designated to shore up the finances of the Portsmouth Fire and Police Departments. The Anonymous Firefighter complained about Mayor Malone’s unpredictable role in the contract negotiations. Malone “flat-out said yes in one meeting. And the very next meeting said no,” the Anonymous Firefighter told Lewis. It is true that  Malone,in the tradition of Portsmouth mayoral dunces such as Bauer and Kalb, often does not know what he’s doing,  but in the end you can count on him to figure out which side his bread is buttered on. Malone knew he could not afford to lose the support of the public employees,  the police and fire departments especially, which is why he made a personal contribution of $1000 dollars to the committee that was campaigning for the passage of the so-called Safety Levy on behalf of police and fire department employees. Why would a mayor spend a thousand dollars of his own money to support a tax increase for his constituents? Because he knows he has more to fear from public employees than from the public, and from the police and particularly the  fire department, which blatantly exploited the “safety issue” among senior voters in the Safety Levy campaign, especially at places like the Hill View Retirement Center, where firefighter Timothy Alger, now Lieutenant Alger, was reportedly among those firefighters seeing that scare-tactic anonymous flyers (click here)were put, possibly illegally,  into the mail slots of Hill View residents. In a letter to the PDT (5 Dec. 2011), Alger expressed his strong opposition to  city councilman who asked  if there should be a change in the city charter, which currently states the  number of firefighters can not fall below 44, a restrictive condition for any city charter to have, but especially a city in fiscal crisis whose population has been steadily sinking for half a century and is now less than half of what it once was.

Future Portsmouth mayor and chief contract negotiator Rev. Malone, with shades and bible, 
preaching  on steps of Municipal Building 2007 (click here)

The financial “hardships” that the Anonymous Firefighter claims Portsmouth firefighters have had to endure are of the kind that can infuriate unemployed workers in the private sector, who lost in the Great Recession of the past six years not part of their clothing allowance but their livelihood itself, and if anything like these “hardships” of Portsmouth firefighters took place with public employees in Wisconsin, it is not hard to understand why some Democratic union members voted against recalling Governor Walker last week, and it will not be hard to understand if some Democratic private sector union members do the same thing and vote Republican rather than Democratic in next November’s presidential election.  On 8 June, 2012, the International Association of Fire Fighters, the parent union of Portsmouth  firefighters, endorsed the reelection of Obama. The endorsement by a public employee union is a two-edge sword which probably will cut opposite ways in the November elections. Public employee unions may be able to negotiate contracts very effectively with mayors and city councils,  but the disparities in job security and  pensions and benefits between public and private employees is so glaring (though not in the case of public school teachers: click here) that public employee unions may be the Achilles Heel that will cost the Democrats the White House in November.