{"id":6834,"date":"2016-06-23T07:00:05","date_gmt":"2016-06-23T11:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=6834"},"modified":"2018-04-26T10:28:03","modified_gmt":"2018-04-26T14:28:03","slug":"mocos-giant-tax-hike-part-four","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=6834","title":{"rendered":"MoCo\u2019s Giant Tax Hike, Part Four"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

The tax hike is the part of the budget that is getting the most attention, but the County Council took another unusual step: it refused to fund part of the county employees\u2019 collective bargaining agreements.\u00a0 Labor has taken notice.<\/p>\n

Salary increases in the county\u2019s collective bargaining agreements are comprised of three main components.\u00a0 First, there is a general wage adjustment that all employees receive.\u00a0 Second, there is a service increment, also called a step increase, that employees who are not at the top of the salary scale for their classification receive.\u00a0 Third, there is a longevity increment that is received only by employees who are at the top of their scale and have completed twenty years of service.\u00a0 All of these items, along with many others, are negotiated by the three county employee unions (MCGEO<\/a>, the Fire Fighters and the Police) and the Executive and codified in collective bargaining agreements.\u00a0 The agreements then go to the council, which can decide to fund all, some, or no items that create economic costs.<\/p>\n

During the Great Recession, the employees received no raises of any kind in Fiscal Years 2011, 2012 and 2013.\u00a0 Afterwards, the unions negotiated for and received general wage adjustments, steps and longevity increments as well as \u201cmake-up steps.\u201d\u00a0 The latter were intended to compensate the employees for steps they did not receive during the recession.\u00a0 The unions won make-up steps in Fiscal Years 2014, 2015 and 2017 (this year\u2019s budget)<\/a> with the exception of the Fire Fighters this year.\u00a0 During these years, the combined general wage adjustments, steps and make-up steps ranged from 6.8% to 9.8% per year.<\/p>\n

This year, the council approved MCPS\u2019s funding increase on the condition that some of the money scheduled to fund MCPS employees\u2019 raises be instead redirected to hire teachers and other staff.\u00a0 The school board agreed.\u00a0 In order to maintain equity between MCPS employees and county employees, the council insisted that the county unions give up some of their raises and primarily targeted their make-up steps.\u00a0 The council refused to fund eight items in the collective bargaining agreements which together totaled $4.1 million in savings in Fiscal Year 2017<\/a>, leaving the unions with raises of 4.5 percent.\u00a0 Only Council Member Marc Elrich voted with the unions.<\/p>\n

The county unions were outraged.\u00a0 MCGEO, the largest of them, published a scathing response<\/a> on its website, blasting the council as \u201chypocrites\u201d who engage in \u201cpublic manipulation in order to achieve what looks like sound fiscal management while achieving nothing.\u201d\u00a0 The council had approved make-up steps and total salary increases of 6.8-9.8% in both 2014 and 2015, so what had changed now?\u00a0 The difference is that few people were paying attention in those two years because a tax hike was not on the table.\u00a0 Now that a large tax hike was being considered, big raises were not politically feasible.\u00a0 Hence MCGEO\u2019s anger.<\/p>\n

Justified or not, the council had achieved $4.1 million in savings by trimming employee salary increases.\u00a0 That money could have been used to reduce the property tax increase, but that\u2019s not what happened.\u00a0 Why not?\u00a0 We will have more in Part Five.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. The tax hike is the part of the budget that is getting the most attention, but the County Council took another unusual step: it refused to fund part of the county employees\u2019 collective bargaining agreements.\u00a0 Labor has taken notice. Salary increases in the county\u2019s collective bargaining agreements are comprised of three main … Continue reading MoCo\u2019s Giant Tax Hike, Part Four<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,33,22,63,15,132,178,23],"tags":[1545,1368,2176,1469,1493,1463],"class_list":["post-6834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-budget","category-mcgeo","category-montgomery-county","category-montgomery-county-council","category-property-taxes","category-public-employees","category-unions","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-budget","tag-giant-tax-hike-series","tag-mcgeo","tag-montgomery-county","tag-montgomery-county-council"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-1Me","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6835,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6834\/revisions\/6835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}