City To Save $500K in Pension, Bill $18K for Capitol Mutual Aid

The city has racked up about $18,000 of police overtime costs from its police officers providing mutual aid at the state Capitol, a city official said Thursday.

Brookfield city police officers traveled to Madison on eight days, starting on Feb. 19 through March 3, working about 300 overtime hours, city Finance Director Robert Scott said in an interview.

The city will be reimbursed for the costs, Scott said Friday. The city initially thought it would not seek reimbursement because it would have required the city to take on all liability, should its officers be injured on duty in Madison. But further investigation found reimbursement was possible without taking on that risk, Scott said.

Emotions are running high at the Capitol as public workers and union supporters object to sweeping changes to restrict public employee collective bargaining to capped wages only.

Scott explained how the changes will affect the city's approximately 360 workers and city taxpayers. 

The city will save about $500,000 in annual pension costs, trimming expenses from the city's $37 million budget. 

Union-represented employees: The changes will not affect about two-thirds of city employees until as late as Jan. 1, 2015. 

The city has five employee unions, representing about 250 workers. Four of the unions have contracts that do not expire until Dec. 31, 2014, Scott said. One contract - the firefighters local - expires Dec. 31, 2011.

Once those contracts expire, union-represented workers will be subject to increased pension contributions and will only be able to bargain on wages. It is not yet known how the city will handle all other bargaining issues once the current contracts expire.

Two of the unions — those representing fire and police personnel — were exempted from the impact of the repair bill and will continue to have full collective bargaining rights.

Mayor Steve Ponto has said where command officers may earn less than their staff. 

Non-represented employees: The approximately 110 city workers who are not represented by unions, including department heads and police and fire command staff, will be subject to the budget repair bill's requirement that employees covered by the Wisconsin Retirement System contribute 5.8 percent toward their pension plans. 

All city of Brookfield employees currently pay nothing toward their pension plans. The city pays the full cost of both the employer and employee contributions to the Wisconsin Retirement System. 

"The first paycheck in April those (non-represented) employees will start paying 5.8 percent of their gross pay in pension contributions," Scott said. 

That will shift about $500,000 in annual pension costs from the city to workers. 

Health premiums: Scott predicted that aldermen and the mayor will not seek to increase the employee share of health insurance premiums to the 12.6 percent suggested by the governor. 

That is because non-represented city employees already pay 10 percent of their premiums if they participate in the city's wellness program, which involves completing a health risk assessment questionnaire, or 20 percent if they do not participate. 

Union-represented city workers pay 10 percent of their premiums if they are in the wellness program and 15 percent if they are not, Scott said. 

He said a number of workers do pay the higher percentages of 15 and 20, higher than the governor proposed. 

Scott said the 10 to 20 percent contributions were higher than some municipal peers. 

"We’ve been ahead of the curve on this," he said.

Extended labor contracts: The city had union contracts approved through the end of 2012 but last year aldermen approved "successor contracts" for four of the five unions that extend from Jan. 1, 2013 through Dec. 31, 2014. A successor agreement was not reached with the firefighters union.

Scott said he does not know whether those extended contracts will be enforceable or whether the budget repair bill changes will supercede them. 

The extensions were approved last summer and fall. 

Scott said the successor contracts were approved as "a special labor relations strategy looking at long-term cost stability to get the unions to the higher health insurance contributions and some other things that were good from a management perspective."

He said the extended contracts call for annual wages increases of 1.5 and 2 percent.