On Thursday, Tucson attorney Stephen Portell sent a Notice of Claim to Pima County Sheriff Mark Napier, County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry, and members of the Board of Supervisors on behalf of the Pima County Deputy Sheriffs’ Association and the Pima County Correctional Officers’ Association. The Notice of Claim challenges Sheriff Napier’s plans to address the County’s failure to appropriately pay personnel, and perceived “cronyism.”
Napier ran against former Sheriff Chris Nanos in the 2016 election on a platform of cleaning up the Sheriff’s Office and fixing the “Step Program.” He also promised to restore integrity to the Department, which has been mired in controversy, including the conviction of former Chief Deputy Chris Radtke as part of an “18 year-long conspiracy” in which RICO funds were misused.
The deputies and correctional officers have been promised annual increases for years. Those promises have not been honored. The Board of Supervisors have approved annual step plans, and as the officers former attorney advised the Board in 2016, the step plans were “widely circulated and even advertised to current Deputies and Correctional Officers and potential new hires. The promised increases have been used as an inducement to both continued and new employment. And they simply have not materialized.”
Among the issues outlined in the Notice of Claim is the proposed “military-style” pay package being promoted by Napier. In the Notice, Portell specifically addresses “the more troubling aspects” of Napier’s proposal. He writes:
1) It exists outside the law, procedures and institutions of the State of Arizona; and
2) It magnifies, not ameliorates, the problems of wage compression, broken promises and underfunding of the law enforcement retirement system.What is most alarming – and precipitated this letter – are some of the wildly inaccurate factual claims in the Repudiation Memo and the public statements of the Sheriff on December 12, 2017. I want to highlight some of the more problematic claims.
First, the Step Program is not “dead” due to some backdoor negotiations with our County Administrator or, at least, it defies everything I know about our county’s government and procedures. Even if such a “military-style” pay package was discussed with our County Administrator , there is no compliance with Pima County’ s ordinances and no groundswell of public support, especially when the Board of Supervisors have (apparently) not received a briefing on the details of this “military-style” pay proposal. More specifically, and as described above, LEMSC has not proposed a plan for classifications or pay as required by A.R.S. §38-10 03(1). There are no public records showing that LEMSC has considered or approved the Sheriff’s “military- sty le” pay program, and, as noted above, the process of working with LEMSC is not discretionary on the Sheriff’s part.
Second, the Sheriff has not “saved” two million dollars ($2,000,000) in the Department. This number is not audited. It is a claim that apparently assigns (dubious) value to the Sheriff’s decision to freeze the normal and necessary advancement of entire ranks of law enforcement officers as people leave the department for other jobs or retire. By counting attrition and freezing promotions, the Sheriff is not “saving” anything. He is simply allowing the Department to devolve into a smaller entity with fewer leaders and crumbling morale.
Third, if systematically dismantling the Sheriff’s Department is now considered a responsible cost-saving measure, the Sheriff should have the candor to present his actions in a true light. For example, he has drastically altered who, how and when members of law enforcement receive on-call pay. And for the few positions that he has unilaterally decided CAN receive on-call pay, the Sheriff has filled those positions without regard to experience, years of service or via competitive processes. These actions smack of the same cronyism that the Sheriff decried when he ran a campaign that highlighted the misconduct of then Sheriff Chris Nanos. This is an area where LEMSC can and should provide oversight. As of the date of this letter, LEMSC has provided no guidance, nor has the Sheriff sought any such guidance.
On the civilian side, Pima County employees have defined rights and responsibilities vis-a-vis on-call pay. See Pima County’s Merit System Rules and Personnel Policies Rule 8-102 , Section E which provides in relevant part that ” … [O]n-call duty shall be allocated as evenly as possible among all employees qualified to do the work”. That is not happening in the Department. On-call pay is being selectively and non – competitively doled out. Now, more than ever, LEMSC oversight is desperately needed.
To put it bluntly, the Sheriff s arbitrary decision to cut-off on-call pay, but keep his deputies saddled with the same responsibilities and expectations, forces an average $8,000.00 to $10,000.00 pay cut on the backs of the hardest working members of the Department. These brave men and women are being forced to either (a) do less in the name of public safety (which, for them, is not an option) or (b) simply perform their duties for less pay (which is the current state of affairs). The Sheriffs decisions regarding on-call pay appear to be blatant violations of A.R.S §23-391(A) & (B) (Overtime Pay; Work Week) (expecting deputies to perform their on-call duties WITHOUT on-call pay). The circumstances also appear to be a violation of A.R.S §23-392(A) which fixes the overtime compensations of Pima County deputies. In the next few weeks, I will decide whether a separate Notice of Claim on those issues is warranted.
In the meantime, there appears to be no effort on the part of Sheriff Napier to quantify the impact of his decisions on the deputies and corrections officers in terms of their morale or compensation. Attrition–due to retirement, turnover or impossibly low morale – is not a “savings” to Pima County residents. Losing experienced law enforcement officers actually costs Pima County money. Our residents need a forensically-reliable audit to understand the Sheriffs claim that $2,000,000 was saved by him, personally, in the last eleven (11) months. If an independent audit is completed, I would hope that it would be made public to restore confidence in the Department. In the end, arbitrary decisions- without public oversight-are exactly what caused the RICO fund abuses that have come to light. Let’s not repeat those mistakes now.
In the final analysis, a “leaner” law enforcement agency is not necessarily a better and more efficient agency. It is not necessarily a law enforcement agency equipped to provide safety and other vital services to Pima County residents. “Leaner” is euphemistic corporate-speak that- in these circumstances – translate s to “we will have fewer employees and pay the ones we have a lot less than is fair or appropriate.” When it comes to safety and vital first responder services to our citizens, responsibility should be our guiding principle. Shrinking and “balancing” a budget -on the backs of the people who protect us – is not responsible. It is reprehensible.