Is Jim Cooper Guiding Elk Grove Toward Being ‘Vallejo-ed’

At Wednesday night’s Elk Grove City Council meeting, the public and council members heard a bleak budget projection from city manager Laura Gill.

In what was a pretty straight forward no- b.s.-assessment, Gill said the city was facing tough times for at least the next three to four years and it would need to swallow some bitter medicine. That medicine would come in the form of, among other things, reduced staffing budgets.

Although Gill said there were no further anticipated layoffs than the four scheduled for this month, city administrative employees have committed to making various wage and benefit concession that will save the city $570,000 next fiscal year.

Gill did drop a bit of a bombshell, at least as far the Elk Grove Police Officer Association were concerned. Gill said the city will seek to negotiate $680,000 in wage and benefit concessions from the officers.

Speaking before the council, Elk Grove Police Officer Association president Dan Koontz acknowledged the city’s tough financial situation and said his membership would work toward a solution. Nonetheless, Koontz also made it clear that his association would still look out for the economic interests of its members.

Then Koontz made this conciliatory comment; “We aren’t going to do a Vallejo.”

Koontz was referencing the 20008 Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing of the City of Vallejo, Calif. By several accounts, Vallejo’s problems stemmed from exorbitant salaries and benefits for firefighters and police officers, which may have accounted for 80 percent of the city’s general fund budget.

To get out from the overwhelming burden of the public safety labor contracts and pension liabilities, the city had little choice but to seek judicial relief.

Curiously, council member Jim Cooper, a 25-year law enforcement veteran himself, decided to weigh in on the matter before Koontz even spoke. In essence, Cooper showed his entire hand to the police officers association.

Cooper said:

“Law enforcement is my number one priority and my number one concern. The city can do lot more sharpening of the pencil looking for ways to cut. Without public safety, there is no public safety. That’s a bigee in my book.”

Then for the coupe de grace to taxpayers, Cooper said: “We should sharpen our pencil and go back and make cuts in other areas versus in law enforcement.

Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of negotiations knows that one should never telegraph what their stance is unless they are willingly putting themselves in a submissive bargaining position.

But that is basically what Cooper did. By saying the city should make cuts in other areas he is flat-out telling the police officers, ‘go ahead, be unwilling to share in the sacrifice, because you know what, we will offer up other budgetary sacrificial lambs just to keep you happy.’

Now as Gill, Chief Lehner and other members of the city’s team representing Elk Grove taxpayers meet with Koontz and his team to negotiate, the police officers know they have a trump card in their hand via Cooper's, and to a lesser extent council member Sophia Scherman statements. The officers can hunker down and metaphorically hold Elk Grove taxpayers as their hostages and not have to make any sacrifices unless they want to.

Cooper has severely hampered Gill’s ability to get the concessions from police officers others city employees have agreed to. He may have also unwittingly created a morale problem for Gill with the city employees who already made concessions under her direct purview.

It is this type of boneheaded leadership displayed by council member Cooper that could lead Elk Grove down the path of financial insolvency.

If you don’t think this scenario can play out here over time, just look to Vallejo.


(The closed door negotiations are an entirely additional problem. Read this post on the need for more sunshine on labor negotiations, particularly as it relates to the gaping loophole in the Brown Act.)