Miami-Dade mayor: No cop layoffs

Aug. 28--Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez announced Thursday he will no longer seek to eliminate 110 police-officer positions in his proposed budget, after finding yet another wave of new revenue.

The mayor's announcement at a 2:30 p.m. news conference appears to remove the most contentious element of his proposed budget. Several county commissioners insisted earlier this week they would not endorse police cuts.

Miami-Dade's police department still faces staffing cuts in its civilian ranks. Gimenez said he had no update on how many civilian investigators and administrators would lose their jobs in the budget year that begins Oct 1.

Gimenez said about $9 million in new savings comes from selling county-rescue helicopters and switching to leased arrangements, and from the Jackson Health System's leaving the county's health-insurance fund.

The mayor's initial 2014-15 proposed budget had called for the elimination of 228 sworn-officer positions, which prompted an outcry even from police brass. About half the targeted positions were investigators or officers assigned to work cases.

The number then went down to 110, with Gimenez saying administrators intended to push it even lower as they found other savings.

His administration pointed to a redesigned healthcare plan as a way to avoid officer layoffs -- if labor unions signed off on the change. On Thursday, the largest union did so.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 199, which represents some 9,000 general-government workers, became the third union in three days to settle with county government, which is required to renegotiate collective-bargaining contracts every three years.

"We got a deal," said Andy Madtes, the union's administrator.

Madtes had been the first union leader to sit down with Gimenez's negotiators to try to hash out a settlement. The relationship between the administration and labor had eroded over the past couple of years, with Gimenez continuing to push for benefit concessions from workers instead of service cuts, layoffs or a higher property-tax rate.

This week's string of labor agreements, struck after the mayor dropped most of his initial demands, marked what unions say is a shift in attitude from Gimenez. His administration has agreed to give workers a cost-of-living increase in 2017 if property values increase more than projected.

In AFSCME Local 199's case, the county also agreed that, in addition to those increases, the union's members would see a restoration in 2017 of the 1-percent salary cut they agreed to three years ago to help Miami-Dade during the bad economy. That restoration would also be contingent on better-than-projected tax rolls in 2015 and 2016.

Under the deal, the county will in turn redesign its employee health insurance to make it more restrictive, in the case of one benefit plan, or more expensive, in the case of two other plans, to save or bring in more money.

By getting AFSCME Local 199 to agree to the new coverage along with the three other unions that settled this week, about 15,000 of the county's 25,000 workforce will be covered by the retooled insurance option -- potentially saving Miami-Dade$15 million a year.

Gimenez's administration is hoping to save up to $50 million in the $4.5 billion operating budget for 2014-15 if the remaining six collective-bargaining units that have not reached agreements also accept the healthcare changes.

While the four settlements could put pressure on the other collective-bargaining units to negotiate, those units have their own specific pending grievances or contract sticking points that would first need to be sorted out. Some unions -- such as the Police Benevolent Association, which has not sat down with the county -- have two barganing units.

The unions to have already settled are AFSCME Local 3292, which represents solid-waste workers, AFSCME Local 1542, which represents aviation employees, and Government Supervisors Association of Florida OPEIU Local 100, which represents supervisors and professionals.

"I know that working together, we can all find innovative ways to responsibly manage Miami-Dade County's future employee costs while remaining committed to ensuring that our government is more efficient in its use of hard earned taxpayer dollars," Gimenez said in a statement.

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