In any war of attrition, the belligerent force attacks and attacks, hoping to wear down the opposing force with relentless conflict. Even small-scale violence exacts its toll. With time, the stronger force will prevail, the weaker one capitulating, outgunned and no longer able to withstand relentless assault.
The San Antonio police union’s intensifying attacks against its own leader, San Antonio Police Chief William McManus, seem intended to topple him, even though such tactics have failed to dislodge City Manager Sheryl Sculley after two long years. What must people visiting here think? The leaders in a city that attracts millions for its ambiante familiar, its welcoming culture, are under attack by some of the very people sworn to keep the peace.
The San Antonio Police Officers Association issued an unusual, 12-page indictment of McManus and Sculley on Tuesday titled “SAPOA No Confidence Vote_After Action Report.” The document recounts the lop-sided results of the union vote held March 14-23 in which 1,944 of the 2,164 members, or 90% of the rank and file, voted by a margin of 97-3% no confidence in McManus. That’s old news now, but the report brings it back for another day and another headline.
The report borders on hysteria. Turning to red ink where black ink on white paper will not do, union officials assert the vote was demanded by union members, conducted independently by a third-party professional, and carried out without strong-arm tactics or coercion. Voluntary turnout was overwhelming. And, the union leadership asserts in red, “This is NOT about contract negotiations.”
It’s the same red ink splashed all over the home page of its propaganda website, Public Safety Facts. The election’s results offer the kind of numbers usually reported in places like North Korea, Syria or Iran, or maybe Venezuela and Nicaragua. Some of the same talking points about turnout and the will of the masses rings familiar, too.
What follows in the 12-page report is a rambling screed, less an indictment of McManus and Sculley, and more of a summary sentencing by self-appointed vigilantes. Statements unsupported by any credible evidence permeate each page: “As City Manager Sheryl Sculley systematically attempted to dismantle the San Antonio Police Department, Chief McManus stood by and said nothing.”
What are the report’s authors talking about? No one is dismantling the police department. That is delusional. Was anyone downtown Sunday when 65,000 people participated in Síclovía? I spoke to a number of police officers who did an excellent job of crowd and traffic control, managing thousands of people of all ages, on and off bicycles. People and the police got along fine, and all seemed in good spirits. I was wearing a bike helmet and only recognized a few times, but the officers I spoke with were in a good mood and acted professionally. I was out for hours and didn’t witness a single incident of note.
What I did not see was a police department coming apart at its seams, as described in the Tuesday report.
The union’s “After Action Report” is not a credible document. It follows an account in the Express-News by columnist Brain Chasnoff of firefighter union officials targeting a rate increase by the San Antonio Water System with a petition drive to wage its proxy war against Sculley and City Council. A similar petition drive opposing the VIA streetcar project convinced newly elevated Mayor Ivy Taylor to pull city funding and, for all practical purposes, kill the project. Firefighter union officials now hope to score again.
Chasnoff quoted one union official, Stephen Moody, as he exhorted the rank and file in a Facebook posting: “Last week was awesome work and we are within striking distance,” he continued. “We just need some help. We can’t falter on this … Think of it as a chance to kick the folks who been jacking with us for years now square in the nuts.”
Dismantling the police department? Kick folks square in the nuts? These are not San Antonio’s finest speaking.
There are unfortunate consequences to such deliberately misleading and offensive rhetoric. One, there can be no good faith efforts to restart collective bargaining talks. Two, the police and firefighter unions appear to be led by individuals unable to measure their words or actions. Three, the entire city is collateral damage. We aren’t necessarily going to lose any conventions, but who wants to explain law enforcement politics to a visitor?
There are, in fact, a number of issues worth discussing in the report. McManus announced his intentions to fire Officer John Lee, who fatally shot Antronie Scott in an early February police operation to detain him on outstanding felony warrants, and turn over the department’s investigation into the shooting to Bexar County District Attorney Nicolas “Nico” LaHood for possible prosecution.
McManus later reversed himself and said Lee was justified in opening fire at close range because he thought the African-American suspect was holding a gun that proved to be a cell phone. Training, McManus decided, was called for rather than termination or prosecution. That about-face looked bad from all angles, but union officials see it as something more, and the chief’s call for other department reforms as undermining their uniformed authority.
Issues about the size of the police force and the rate of new hires also might be legitimate, although they cannot be considered without measuring the high costs to the City of health care coverage of union members. Were those costs to be contained in a new contract, staffing undoubtedly would return to normal levels.
Such issues are lost in the shouting and finger pointing and constant, if pointless, attacks against Sculley and now McManus. The police and fire unions have never been asked to choose our city’s leaders, or to decide when a change in leadership is warranted. They have no expertise to offer, and certainly no objectivity. Leadership is not their strong suit. Mayor Ivy Taylor and City Council are not going to cede such authority to them, no matter how hostile they become or how long this standoff is prolonged.
Read the latest report for yourselves here. I doubt many will find anything in it that can lead the city forward. Instead, it seems like one more misdirected barrage: loud, damaging, and ineffective, another strategic miscalculation.
Featured photo: Cover of the San Antonio Police Association’s ‘No Confidence Vote After Action Report’. Photo by staff.
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Like police and fire men, but don’t care for unions. These unions will strangle this city if they receive their outrageous demands. They currently cost the city 67% of the budget. This is absolutely ridiculous.
Fair is fair. The 2,000 officers held a vote on confidence on the department leadership put in place by their employer, the 1.4 million citizens of San Antonio. Perhaps then, the 1.4 million citizens of San Antonio have the right to vote on confidence in Mike Helle, the union leader of the officers.
While trying to protect one of the best police compensation packages in Texas, Mr. Helle has led a relentless, unsuccessful campaign to unseat somebody, seemingly anybody: the city manager, then the mayor, and now the police chief. All the while, he claims to worry over the “morale of the department”; unfortunately, morale will never be lower than when Mr. Helle’s unreasonable campaign causes the citizens of San Antonio to lose confidence in their uniform officers.
Were I able to express my confidence in Mr. Helle’s leadership, I would have to vote “No Confidence”.
Great article. I have read the unions public safety website and other propaganda and I am always gob smacked by the complete and under disregard for factual evidence. Like the article pointed out, the use of the phrase “the destruction of the police department ” ugh please give me a break. When I hear reteric like that I know I can’t trust anything else that comes out of their mouth.
Frankly, although I know many SA Police officers (I have coached several cops kids) I have to say I have completely lost any faith in the veracity of ANYTHING these people have to say and my position is the City must NEVER bow to these Neanderthal tactics.
Bob:
I have read with great interest your article and the SAPOA report. I am neither anti union nor anti uniformed city services. I do question the tactics of both unions in the current negotiation process. It seems it is always Mike Helle walking away from the table and breaking off talks like a spoiled brat because he doesn’t get what he wants. Further, when the city offers more it is never enough for the union.
All of us have a choice where to work and who we work for, it seems to me if the working conditions are so deplorable and the morale is so low than we can recruit more police officers. I find it hard to believe Mr. Helle’s claims that the SAPD, which is amongst the best paid PD in the state, can’t find new recruits. In fact, his claims seem to contradict himself with claims of no new cadet classes offered by the city with still a waiting list to get into these classes.
Moreover, the Fireman’s union with their new campaign only serves to hurt the city by denying infrastructure for a future the city needs.
San Antonio can’t afford to pay 67% of its budget to police and fire. They are already well paid and the new negotiated benefits are already generous. I know the unions will never strike because they are petrified of the Taft-Hartley laws so they boisterously make false accusations. Meanwhile the city and our citizens fall by the wayside.
It’s 67% of the General Fund. Not the city budget. Public Safety takes 39% of overall budget. See my other post for more info.
The “generous” package you’re referring to that Mike Helle walked away from like a spoiled brat is because it would have forced most police of this City to take a 10-20% overall cut in pay when you accounted for the amount in benefits being reduced on the backend.
Oh and Mr. Helle’s statements on finding recruits were true. They couldn’t find enough people who were qualified. However, we’re good now because Sculley lowered the qualifications. If you’ve snorted Coke and want to be a cop for San Antonio, welcome aboard!
are you trying to tell us prior to that no one in pd has EVER done coke?
We had much more stringent qualifications prior to this year because we used to only hire the best. Applicants were required to take a polygraph stating they hadn’t ever taken illegal drugs. However because of whatever you choose to believe recent circumstances, SAPD wasn’t attracting the best anymore and couldn’t fill their cadet classes. Hence the lowered standards.
I support a completely private police force over a union controlled one. That is as long as a politically neutral owner sets responsible guidelines for civilian interactions that puts civilian safety as the highest priority.
From the screed: “The vote was conducted by an independent, 3rd party, professional elections administrator. ”
Yes, that’s a fascinating string of adjectives. However, it’s faster, easier, and far more credible to type the name of the organization, I would imagine. Unless…
I’m goinig to put five bucks down that the name of this adminstrator is “SurveyMonkey.” Any takers?
For all those wanting to get rid of our police and fire unions, what do you propose we replace them with?
Do you want for-profit companies taking over these civic duties? Would a private company pick up the tab for comprehensive insurance and decent retirement plans for all its employees? If not, why would a recruit take on a part-time gig patrolling our most dangerous streets for $10 an hour and no benefits?
Like many here, I do not like the abuses of union power and the corruption over the years. However, collective bargaining has allowed union workers to earn a living wage and has helped create a middle-class in this country.
How do you completely replace the current system without turning our city’s finest into Wal-mart or Incarnate Word security guards?
Getting rid of the fire and police union does not mean getting rid of the fire and police.
They can be city employees and get competitive wages and benefits just like the rest of city employees.
Saying that it’s either union corruption OR Walmart security guards is a false choice.
The majority of police and fire personnel do a great job, and should be offered a good wage and benefit package.
But the corrupt union guys clearly are off the rails here.
An interesting fact you won’t hear from the City is that our fire and police make do with much less when compared to the other cities in Texas. Yes, they’re compensated more, but the City spends MUCH less per capita on public safety then all the other cities. While it can’t be verified, I believe it’s because we employ the cream of the crop. Why else could San Antonio get away with spending 39% of its overall budget on Public Safety when everyone else spends 50%? It’s because you get what you pay for.
Mike–police and fire are the only groups who have collective bargaining rights in Texas… So I would guess if we got rid of those unions, we would run them just like every other government-run organization in the state. Without these bloated union contracts, there would be actual merit-based pay for employees and the compensation packages could be built based on the qualifications of the individual. Yes, if they were offering $10/hour they wouldn’t get any recruits–but then we wouldn’t have any policemen and they would have to raise their rate in order to gain the necessary amount of recruits. That’s called a free market.
Also, these agreements don’t allow our police chief to do his job. Did you read the Rivard article outlining the process McManus has to go through to fire an employee?? It’s time consuming and costly–to the point that it’s easier and cheaper to put them on desk duty until they retire. That’s RIDICULOUS!
If your concern is about making sure they earn a living wage, we don’t need unions to make sure that’s what they earn… That’s like using a machine gun to kill a spider.
A- I’m not sure what you think collective bargaining is, but it is definitely still a free market. The biggest benefit is that it gives the employees a say in working conditions to a management who is usually out of touch with reality on the street. However, I know that the rank and file can also be out of touch with economic reality, hence why it’s called bargaining. It’s a tit for tat process. We’ll take a lower wage increase if you change this working condition, etc. The collective part is because it’s representatives that take the concerns of the department to the leadership on behalf of everyone and the leadership can choose to implement the concerns or ignore them.
The power is enormously in favor of the City because they hold the purse strings. Worse case scenario with San Antonio is that we go 8 more years without a new contract. Yes, fire and police will still have awesome health benefits during that time, but guess what? They also won’t see a pay raise for 10 years and then after that the contract is null and void and they lose all protections and Sculley can pay them whatever she wants.
While I did not read the article on the process of firing an employee, I wonder if it mentions “Indefinite Suspensions”. It’s what the Chiefs use to skirt the process and essentially fire you without all the hassle.
Let me tell you how it typically works in San Antonio. If an employee screws up, the Chief issues an indefinite suspension which means you’re still on the roster, but you’ll never get another dime or benefit from the City again. If the employee really did screw up bad enough to warrant the suspension, they usually quit so they can get back the money they put into the pension without interest. The money the city put in stays in the pension.
If the employee believes he was unfairly “fired”, that employee has to take on the risk and sue to get his job back. If the employee was fired for a good reason, the suspension usually stands. If he was fired because the Chief/Mayor/City Manager were playing politics with his job, then usually they give them their job back.
I do not object to the unions; in their best form, they serve a useful purpose. I question their leadership. As I said above, if the union can vote on the department leadership chosen by the citizens of San Antonio through their elected officials, it seems that the citizens of San Antonio should be able to vote on the leadership the union has chosen. Seems fair…
From where I’m sitting folks who retire because they don’t like the changes is good attrition.
And I completely get their perspective. its not a good feeling to see your employer erode your benefits and burden you with more work. But this is something the rest of the world has already experienced so there’s not a lot of sympathy.
It’s 67% of the General Fund people. NOT the overall city budget. Comments like these are the very reason there is a war between the city leaders and its public safety employees. For a group of men and women who hold honor and integrity to a high standard, it’s no wonder they’re mad as hell over her campaign of half truths and misleading statements.
Public Safety for San Antonio takes up 39% of the overall budget and that number has held steady for several years running. All other major cities in Texas spend around 50% of their budget on Public Safety. This can be verified by reviewing city CAFRS reports. The General Fund is an operating budget she can (and has) easily manipulate to show whatever statistic she wants. The one budget she can’t easily manipulate is the overall budget. The fact the media does nothing to dispel the budget myth only adds fuel to the fire.
What I don’t understand is why doesn’t the union respect councils decision to hold public safety at 66% of the gf? Council set the policy and the cm is doing her job by attempting to abide by that direction. It’s like a kid that says they know better than their parents.
What I don’t understand is why doesn’t the union respect councils decision to hold public safety at 66% of the gf? Council set the policy and the cm is doing her job by attempting to abide by that direction. It’s like a kid that says they know better than their parents. If they don’t agree with councils decision they need to attempt to persuade council to change it, not attack the folks responsible for implementing it.
It’s because the General Fund isn’t a hard factual fund that can’t be manipulated by the City Manager. If Sheryl Sculley wanted Public Safety to take up 100% of the General Fund tomorrow she can easily do that by reorganizing the books and moving around income and expenditures into or out of different funds. In the same way if you had 2 checking and 3 savings accounts you could make yourself look poor or rich, she can do the same with the different city funds. It’s a shell game until you look at the overall budget. That’s the only number that can’t be manipulated. In fact, just a few years ago before this started, public safety was around 50% of the general fund. It’s grown to 66% not because of out of control costs, but because she did in fact reorganize the books.
If the City Council came out and said “we’re holding the line of Public Safety at 39% of the overall budget”, the unions would have no problems with that. However, 39% doesn’t sound like such a big deal nor get people stirred up so they use a misleading and confusing fact that public safety is 66% of the general fund which sounds horrible. Hence why you have a very angry group of public servants who are waging war with a group of people they believe have manufactured a crisis to further their own agendas.
please tell me folks don’t actually believe that ? That city council or the cm is so consumed with self promotion that instead of tackling real city problems they figure it’s easier and more advantageous to just create a fake crisis that creates political enemies and subjects them to political attacks just so they can save the day? Cmon man?
Joey, are they or are they not politicians?
To clarify, yes, I believe they did create a “crisis”. Just look at the comments above to see how well it’s worked. Everyone in the city is hopping mad at the outrageous health benefits of our greedy first responders and those benefits are about to bankrupt the City, right?
Just to put it into prospective, as Gilbert Garcia of the EN pointed out last year, the health care costs of the ENTIRE CITY are just over 1% of the total city budget. Seems like we’ve got a ways to go before they’re bankrupting stuff.
Meanwhile, City Council passed a highly questionable $3.4B water pipe right under our noses without much debate. That B is for Billions.
I consider Mike Smith’s comments about the City General Budget to be misleading at best, disinformation at worst. His “media myths” is nonsene.
1. City Manager Sheryl Sculley does not have the discretion to tap into Restricted Funds and borrow money from, say, the Capital Budget and divert money voters chose to devote to street and sidewalk repair, for example, and add that to the General Fund to pay police and firefighters. The General Fund is the budget city leaders have to work with, for better or worse. We can grow that budget through economic growth, as has occurred in nine of the last 10 years, or we can raise taxes, or do both. We have not had a tax increase in 20 years, if memory serves. Or we can spend less money on everything else: streets, sidewalks, drainage, libraries, parks, etc. and give even more of the General Fund Budget to public safety workers.
2. No major city in Texas spends as much of its General Budget on uniformed personnel as San Antonio.
3. The union leaders routinely talk of the City Manager manipulating City finances. That is not how the smartest municipal finance people on Wall Street see it. All three national bond rating agencies rank San Antonio as the best fiscally managed big city in the country, and thus the only city with a population of more than one million people with AAA bond ratings. Who do you want to believe in assessing the City’s fiscal management practices? Independent experts who would not hesitate to mark down the City, or local union officials with no background in municipal finance?
4. The Mayor’s Task Force appointed by former Mayor Julián Castro in 2013 produced the definitive report comparing Texas cities and how San Antonio compensates its police and firefighters and how those costs impact the budget. That is the document that has guided staff and City Council in limited spending to 67% of the General Fund Budget and in asserting that our uniformed personnel are among the best compensated in Texas. I suggest readers reference that document and make up their own minds:
https://therivardreport.com/united-city-council-back-task-force-report-city-staff-coming-police-fire-contract-negotiations/
Bob nailed it again. That’s the perfect explanation for the percentage of the budget consumed by public safety and why the union’s apples-to-oranges calculation using restricted funds is just wrong.
This whole thing really isn’t complicated. The officers and firefighters deserve a raise, and the City Manager wants to give them one. They just need to contribute to the cost of healthcare, like most other employees in America. If we could move beyond all this ridiculousness and get back to the bargaining table, we could all move on to San Antonio’s other pressing challenges.
Your first point is right on the money, literally. Budget funds are allocated a certain way and Council has directed staff to keep public safety spending at 66% of the general fund.
Robert,
There is literally close to 40 different funds other then the “General Fund” for a variety of different things. They are all the things that San Antonio spends money on that aren’t included in the “General” Fund. Sanitation and IT are two of the biggest offenders in not being in the General Fund even though they could and should be because they’re a City department just like all the other ones in the General Fund.
Sanitation isn’t in the General Fund because it has a dedicated tax in our CPS bills. Information Technology isn’t in the General Fund because it (along with many other city departments) are funded by “charging” the main city departments for using their services. Since fire and police are the two biggest city departments, guess where most of COSA’s IT funding comes from. The fire and police budgets.
http://www.sanantonio.gov/Portals/0/Files/budget/FY2016/FY16-Adopted-Document.pdf
Starting on page 15 is where the different funds are listed. “Internal Service Funds” and “Enterprise Funds” are enormously at the City’s discretion on what’s included in them. She accounts for these funds under “Restricted Funds”. Meaning it’s money dedicated to specific purposes. By having all these different funds, it decreases items that would typically fall under General Fund thus making fire and police take up a larger share of the General Fund. She can and does create or dissolve certain funds at her and City Council’s discretion. There is no law stating what is or isn’t in a “Restricted Fund”.
So. To clarify, as listed on page 22, (in addition to Sanitation and IT) the golf courses fall under the Golf Course Operating Fund. NOT under the General Fund. The parks get much of its budget from the Park Venue Tax Fund and the Parks Environmental Fund. Again, not the General Fund.
My sole point of all this is to show that there isn’t a nation wide single definition for what is included in a “General Fund.” It’s at the discretion of any given City. So for you to say “No major city in Texas spends as much of its General Budget on uniformed personnel as San Antonio” is absolutely misleading. You didn’t even use the right terminology! Did you mean the General Fund? I don’t know! Hence why people are confused and think Public Safety is bankrupting the City when it’s far from it. San Antonio spends 39% of it’s overall budget on public safety. Period.
To prove my point, here is a comparison study from Dallas in 2014 on General Fund spending. As stated on Page 4, they did their best to make it an Apples to Apples comparison but since every City categorizes budget items differently, it was difficult to do. Page 36 is the Public Safety comparison page that refutes your information.
https://www.docdroid.net/92YJ4ON/dallas-bfa-fivetexascities-budgetcomparisons-120114.pdf.html
In reference to what you said on point #3. I 100% agree with you that the smartest financial minds see our budget for what it is. Rock solid. That’s my point. If those greedy union bosses were actually on the road to bankrupting San Antonio, I’m fairly certain we wouldn’t have a AAA bond rating. Just saying.
Which means the credit rating agencies think the financial approach the city is taking with collective bargaining and public safety healthcare is fiscally responsible.
I would love to see the RR do a story on the rules governing collective bargaining rights for police and fire personnel in Texas and what it would take to repeal that right.
Unions allow the city fire fighters and police officers to have a say about their own workplace conditions and compensation. To allow the city manager sole discretion to set employee wages and insurance coverage tips the scale too far in the wrong direction.
Collective bargaining evens the playing field. The city can maintain its current triple A bond rating without jeopardizing workers’ gains.
Samuel Gompers, the first President of the American Federation of Labor, spent his last days in San Antonio. His hidden, misshapen statue is on East Market Street across from the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. We take for granted the 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, workplace safety laws, and so many other worker protections, but none of these reforms would have happened without unions such as the one Gompers led.
Unfortunately, many of these guarantees such as collective bargaining are disappearing. Let’s not allow Samuel Gompers to fade deeper into the shadows.