Urban guerrillas: re-inventing our cities - includes related articles - Panel Discussion

Chief Executive, The, Oct, 1994 by Lorri Grube

Michael S. Levin (Titan industrial): I'm not comfortable with the idea of the citizen as the consumer. It may be useful in some areas of government, but not all. For example, some things are only in government's purview, such as justice, where citizens alone can't determine individual efficiencies. Government doesn't have consumers for justice, it has people who have a social contract with it to provide protection.

Schundler: You're right. Some things do belong at the city-government level, and I agree that policing is one of them. Having vouchers for police doesn't make sense.

On the accountability side, citizens hold the mayor--not the governor, the president, or the state legislature--responsible for policing. The mayor will go down if the services are not provided properly. Thus, we should give the mayor the power to do so. Instead, the police union holds all the cards, because it can pressure the state legislators: people who vote their conscience on the one or two issues they feel strongly about, and then follow the interest group the rest of the time.

Local mayors have no control over police salaries anymore, because the state legislature has passed laws that govern salary contract negotiations. So, the people who are not accountable to the citizens--but who are pressured by the interest groups--have usurped power. And usurpation of power is the beginning of all evil in government. The people who are not held accountable have the power, and they use it to serve their own best interest, which is to get re-elected.

If the mayor had the power to negotiate contracts, I would have twice as many police officers on the street. The average cop in Jersey City today costs $90,000 per year when you add in the cost of future pension payments. The average base salary is about $54,000, but they get about $10,000 in overtime, a $5,000 longevity payment, and a $20,000 total benefits package. It's outrageous, especially since the per capita income in Jersey City is $10,000, and the unemployment rate is 13 percent.

I could hire people for a fraction of the cost if this were a free market, but I'm the one held accountable by the people if I don't pay enough and get poor-quality officers. But if I pay too much and don't have enough police on the street to establish order, I'd be thrown out of office. I can't win.

I would love to cut total police compensation. We also considered paying different amounts depending on the kind of work the officer does. However, the union always says, "No." We then automatically go to arbitration, because that's the law. The arbitrator has to be accepted by the union. If he crosses the union, it will blacklist him. Thus, the bottom line is that the arbitrator is prone to giving attractive rewards to the union.

When I was elected, only 38 percent of our police were doing street patrol. Sixty-two percent worked indoors or in special units. For example, two officers delivered inter-office mail in the city. When I assigned those officers back to street patrol, they sued me for an unfair labor practice. They had a clause in their contract that you cannot diminish police work except through negotiation. I asked, "What makes delivering inter-office mail police work?" The union response is, "If policemen have been allowed to do it, it's part of the sum total of what policemen do."