By Doug Caruso
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS — Columbus firefighters and the City Council approved a three-year labor agreement yesterday, a day before a statewide vote on Issue 2 will decide the fate of curbs on collective bargaining.
The contract ends city payments toward firefighters’ pension plans by the end of 2014 and gives them raises of 2.25 percent in 2012 and 2.75 percent in both 2013 and 2014.
It replaces a contract that would have expired at the end of May.
International Association of Fire Fighters Local 67 President Jack Reall said he sought an early contract not because he was concerned that Issue 2 would pass — a recent poll showed it losing by 25 percentage points — but because he’s concerned that state legislators will bring back portions of it piecemeal over the next several months.
City officials estimate that scaling back and then ending city pension payments for firefighters will save the city almost $49 million through 2019, compared with the amount the city now pays for pensions, said Dan Williamson, spokesman for Mayor Michael B. Coleman.
Firefighters also will take on more of their health-insurance premiums, paying 10 percent instead of 9 percent starting April 1. That will save about $9 million through 2019, Williamson said.
If Issue 2 passes, firefighters will be required to pay at least 15 percent of health-care premiums when the next contract is negotiated. That’s a provision that state legislators might seek to reinstate if Issue 2 fails.
Going from paying 9 percent to 15 percent in one leap would have been difficult for firefighters, Reall said.
“If we’re going to lose money, we want to do it in a controllable manner for our members,” he said. “You just can’t budget that way, whether you’re a city or a firefighter trying to raise a family.”
He said firefighters will lose some money through higher pension and health-care costs in the first two years of the contract, then recoup it in the final year.
A Columbus firefighter with five or more years of experience currently makes about $60,000 per year and will make about $700 more by the end of the three-year contract, Reall said.
All told, city officials expect to spend $4.6 million more — an increase of 2.3 percent — on firefighters’ salaries and benefits next year, with about $776,000 of that attributable to this contract.
Coleman and other city leaders promised in 2009, before voters approved a 25 percent income-tax increase, that they would save $100 million to $150 million over the next 10 years, mostly by renegotiating pension and health-care payments with the city’s unions. With this fire contract, Williamson said, those savings are estimated to be more than $200 million.
“It’s been getting done a lot quicker than the most optimistic of us would have predicted,” he said.
Councilwoman Priscilla R. Tyson, who leads the council’s finance committee, said city officials are working with the unions to achieve savings through the existing collective-bargaining laws.
“I just see us keeping our commitment to our residents by working with the IAFF to reduce our overall budget cost,” she said.
Last night, the council also took the final vote on a three-month process to annex the site of Penn National Gaming’s Hollywood Casino to the West Side.
It was the last step in a settlement reached last summer after Penn National sued to obtain sewer and water service for the $400 million project without annexing.
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