City Council OKs AFSCME Accord
Ann Arbor city council special meeting (Aug 29, 2011): In a 5:15 p.m. special session convened specifically for the purpose of ratifying a new agreement with the city’s largest union, the Ann Arbor city council approved a new contract for its American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 369. It’s a roughly 2.5-year deal, lasting through Dec. 31, 2013.
The city of Ann Arbor held a special meeting on Aug. 29, before its next regularly scheduled meeting on Sept. 6. The urgency to hold a special meeting was based on a typo in a legislative staffer's early draft of a subsequently corrected memo, not based on the actual date in the state's new employment health care legislation. (Simulated correction "illustration" by The Ann Arbor Chronicle)
Key features of the agreement with the 230-member union include: no across-the-board pay increases for the duration of the agreement; employees will make greater contributions to their pension and health care plans; a 10-year vesting period for the pension plan; and an access-only style plan for retiree healthcare benefits.
Council deliberations were relatively brief, with remarks focusing on praise for the city and the union’s respective bargain teams and details of the agreement. Almost equal time was given to the manner in which the special meeting was noticed to the public.
Though questions were raised by The Chronicle through the day on Monday about whether the city had met its obligation to provide notice to the public under the Michigan Open Meetings Act, city attorney Stephen Postema relied on a recent unpublished court of appeals opinion, which is not binding on other courts and which included a strong minority dissent, to justify the city’s failure to meet a basic noticing standard set forth in an opinion from Michigan’s attorney general.
That AG’s opinion – which is also not binding on courts, but which has guided the conduct of public bodies in Michigan for over 30 years – requires public bodies to post physical notice of special meetings in a way that makes the notice publicly accessible for the 18 hours preceding the meeting.
The council’s urgency in approving the contract, reflected in the calling of the special session, was based on recently passed state legislation that limits the amount that public employers can contribute to employee health care costs. Ann Arbor’s contract with AFSCME does not conform to the limits set forth in the legislation. So the council was keen to approve the contract before the effective dates stipulated in the legislation, and did so with only seven of its 11 members able to attend the meeting.
The legislation itself specifies Sept. 15, 2011 as the relevant date; however, Ann Arbor city staff appeared to rely not on the legislation, but on an early draft of a memo drawn up by a legislative staff aide to state senator Mark Jansen, which contained a typo. Although the draft was corrected immediately after its limited initial distribution, the original draft’s stipulation of “Sept. 1″ instead of “Sept. 15″ spurred the city of Ann Arbor to convene the special meeting. The council’s next regularly scheduled meeting is on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011 – well before the actual Sept. 15 date in the legislation. [Full Story]