In Old Saybrook, only the police chief gets a big pay increase
By Jenna Cho j.cho@theday.com
Publication: The Day
Updated 07/16/2011
01:36 AM
Old Saybrook
- Members of the town's supervisors union took a zero increase in their
salaries this year, as did the support staff.
So
did teachers, and the superintendent of schools, whose contract was recently
extended to 2014 with a base annual salary of $165,917.
Layoffs
and employee givebacks have become the norm in the years following the 2008
recession. But for police Chief Michael A. Spera, one
of the highest paid police chiefs in the region, the opposite is true.
As
part of a contract he negotiated with the Police Commission when he became
chief in October 2009, Spera has been receiving, and
will continue to receive, a 7 percent annual salary increase through the
2014-15 fiscal year.
Spera was hired at $105,440 and this year earns
$120,718 - $10,000 more than Edmund H. Mosca made in
his last year as Old Saybrook's chief, a job he held
for 38 years. Spera also makes more than New London
police Chief Margaret Ackley who, at $107,500 a year, is responsible for 96
sworn officers versus Spera's 24.
By
the time he reaches the last of six annual salary "steps" laid out in
his contract, Spera will earn $147,885 a year. Wage
increases after the sixth year will be tied to his performance evaluations.
The
details of Spera's contract, which First Selectman
Michael Pace said no one outside of the Police Commission even knew existed
until recently, has not sat well with some.
"I'm
ex-officio (of the Police Commission), and I was never notified," Pace
said of the contract. "I'm first selectman, and I was never notified. I
got a little problem with that. ... I don't think the Board of Finance, who has
to plan for the (town) finances, knew about it."
Earlier
this week, Pace sent Police Commission Chairman Christina Burnham a memo in
which he called for a review of Spera's contract.
"With
the strained economic time present and in the foreseeable future, I believe
that this 'contract' needs complete review and, if enforceable, request for
re-opening," Pace wrote in his July 12 memo.
Finance
board Chairman Carl Fortuna Jr. declined to comment Friday, saying his board
had not met to review Pace's request.
Spera said he felt he was being unfairly
scrutinized. No other employee or union has been asked to reopen a contract
before it expired, he said.
"I
find it disappointing that the first selectman would claim that he was unaware
that there was a benefits agreement in place for the chief of police," Spera said. "I also find it disappointing that I am
the only employee that is being singled out."
Burnham
argued that the selectmen and Board of Finance should have known about Spera's contract early on because his salary and wage
increases are clearly noted in the budget that the police department recommends
to the selectmen every year.
"For
people to say now that they had no idea just means that they weren't paying
attention to information that we've given them over the last two years,"
Burnham said.
Overtime, choice of car
Pace
had previously asked for a legal opinion on the contract's validity. In a June
8 opinion, town attorney Michael Cronin said he thought that the Oct. 16, 2009,
contract should have been voted on by the full, seven-member Police Commission
rather than by just the three members of its executive committee.
But
the contract is "a legally binding contract on the Town of Old Saybrook,
which acted under the statutory authority granted to it by the Old Saybrook Police Commission," Cronin wrote.
Burnham
said she stood by the contract and the way it was negotiated.
The
Police Commission's bylaws give the executive committee - herself, commission
Vice Chairman Tim Conklin and Secretary Jean Winkler - the right to negotiate Spera's contract without requiring a vote from the full
commission, she said.
The
town never had a written contract with Mosca, Burnham
said.
Pace
said Spera's contract was the most generous he'd ever
seen. It includes a clause that allows the chief to pick an unmarked police car
of his choosing. The town can also use federal or state grant money to pay Spera overtime.
This
would apply to "any federal or state funded operation such as traffic
safety initiatives or providing services where the Town will receive Federal
and State reimbursement such as in time of disaster response and
recovery," the contract states.
"I
don't think a chief of police should get overtime," Pace said.
Burnham
disagrees. She said Spera gets no local taxpayer
dollars for any overtime he incurs. When he helped to relocate the police
station after the March 2010 flood, the Police Commission paid for his overtime
hours with funds from an insurance settlement, she said.
"Yes,
it may be a little unusual (to pay a police chief overtime), but it's also
unusual for a police chief to actually be policing like anyone else,"
Burnham said.
Spera is also the town's emergency management
director, a job separate from his duties as police chief that he is currently
paid $6,466 for, according to the town budget.
Growing tension
The
police commission has been criticized in the past for lack of oversight. Mosca retired after he came under fire for mismanaging a
private police fund that he had sole control over. In 2009, then-Attorney
General Richard Blumenthal ordered Mosca to repay the
so-called Mac Fund $22,500.
Meanwhile,
Spera's contract is the latest in a series of recent
disagreements Pace has had with the commission and department.
Earlier
this year, Pace disbanded a building committee led by commission Vice Chairman
Conklin after early plans for a new police station came in at double the price
tag Pace said the town was willing to pay.
The
town and police union have been in arbitration for months over contract
disagreements, and the Board of Selectmen denied the Police Commission a
request in its 2011-12 budget for three new police
officers, leaving money in the budget for just one new hire.
"We've
had three or four reorganizations of the police department in the last two
years," Pace said. "We have more officers with rank than we ever had.
It's almost a one-to-one ratio. ... I'm not willing to just accept the fact
that this town has a lot more crime. We may have more arrests; that's a
different story. Now, why is that? Is there a different policing philosophy in
town here?"
Pace
said Spera works hard; no one disputes that.
"My
argument is not with the chief," Pace said. "He did what was in his
best interest."
But
when Spera brought to the negotiating table an array
of benefits that would prove costly to the town, the Police Commission should
have put the brakes on, Pace said.
"It's
not the initial cost of 3, or 4, or 5 percent," he said. "It's that
that gets compounded every year going forward. And by the time they reach a 15,
20-year exit retirement, you're talking huge amounts of money."
'An excellent job'
Spera said Friday that his contract contains
nothing more unusual than benefits that school administrators, superintendents
and police chiefs already get.
Old
Saybrook police officers are paid on a five-step
system, and salary increases between steps range from 4.8 percent to 11
percent, he said.
"The
step salary tier system is nothing that's new to municipal government," Spera said.
The
executive committee developed the step system in Spera's
contract to gradually bring up the police chief's salary to what the committee
thought was appropriate for a chief, Burnham said. Mosca
had preferred more vacation days over a higher base salary, so adjusting the
benefits-to-salary ratio when Spera came on board
meant bumping Spera's salary up in exchange for fewer
vacation days.
"You
need to look at their whole compensation packages," Burnham said.
Spera said the only reason Old Saybrook's superintendent and other town unions took zero
increases this year was because their contracts were up and ready to be
negotiated.
"My
benefit agreement wasn't up this year," he said. "It had been defined
in 2009. In 2009, the town agreed to provide these benefits to me. ... I fully
expect in 2015, (the town is) probably going to ask for a zero."
Burnham
said she saw no reason to reopen Spera's contract.
"The
chief's salary is an infinitesimal part of our budget, and we have seen no
necessity to ask him to open up his benefits agreement," she said.
"He
works 90 hours a week for us. The man is at work seven days a week. He's doing
an excellent job. ... We see no reason to go to him and say, 'You're doing an excellent job, you're working way too many
hours, (and) by the way, we're going to take money away from you.'"
j.cho@theday.com
10 Insanely Overpaid Public Employees
By BLAIRE BRIODY, The
Fiscal Times
July 13, 2011
When it comes to government employees, there’s plenty of
news about laid off social workers in Florida,
furloughed forest rangers in Minnesota,
and underpaid teachers everywhere else.
Yet even during these hard times, there are thousands of government employees
who still earn great, big salaries – many of them hundreds of thousands more
than the $400,000 Obama pulls down each year.
In 2009, 347 Texas
state employees earned more than the president; 53 of them made more than
$600,000. In New York,
35 employees were paid over $400k last year. Since 2005, the number of Federal
employees earning $150,000 plus has jumped
tenfold: going from 12,399 to 171,689. Much of the increase has been in
medicine. Doctors at veterans hospitals and prisons
averaged $179,500 in 2010, up from $111,000 in 2005.
See our slideshow here on 10 insanely overpaid government
employees. We reported all their yearly earnings, which in addition to base
salary, includes bonuses, overtime pay, and other pay. The “other pay” can be
things like unused sick days--$594,976 worth of them for one California employee – something private
sector employees could only dream of. Oh, and did we mention all of them are
men?