Mayor vs. Police Union

[ Barney Brantingham's column in SBN-P, 3/31/2005 ]:


Marty Blum crosses the thin blue line


It was ugly.

The mayor versus the cops at Tuesday's Santa Barbara City Council meeting, over a 10 percent pay raise.

Cops packing the chambers in a display of raw political power.

Council members squabbling with one another. Mayor Marty Blum accusing others on the council of leaking confidential information to city unions from a closed session.

She didn't name names and everyone denies it, but there are suspects.

Blum accused council members seeking re-election of approving the raise, despite a looming budget deficit, pandering to win union endorsements.

"The tension was intense," one council member told me. No one remembered anything like it. The police won the vote, 5-2, but what was lost?

Will loss of police union support keep Blum from being re-elected in November? The consensus, especially since no opponents have surfaced yet: Blum will win anyway.

Has the politically active police union gained too much clout over the city fathers and mothers and alienated voters who might see it as arrogance in blue? Or is it just a case of the council not displaying fiscal backbone?

One result of the leak is that it's going to be hard to have a frank give-and-take discussion hashing out key issues at future closed meetings, one member told me. "I don't say anything at these meetings," other than absolutely necessary comments, another said.

The bloody brouhaha was rare in a town where city elections tend to be tea parties and council disagreements are usually settled in private, or muted in public.

Police officers now average $69,000 a year, a living wage perhaps, but I remember that years ago they were grossly underpaid. I wrote a series about it when I covered the police. One year they even went on strike briefly.

Relations between the mayor and the police union are probably shot for good. But the affair has also poisoned relations on the council. No one admits being the leak, though the mayor and Councilwoman Iya Falcone jawed at each other about it Tuesday.

Falcone and Councilman Roger Horton are up for re-election this year. Falcone, who is known to be close to the police union, isn't running for mayor this year, but many think she will run in four years, after Blum is termed out.

Councilman Das Williams didn't get union endorsements when he was elected, but he is said to be on good terms with city unions now.

"Between the two of them, they have all the bases covered," one member of the council joked to me Wednesday.

"It makes me sick," Blum told News-Press reporter Joshua Molina this week about the pay hikes in the face of a looming deficit. "There's fiscal irresponsibility going on here. I see people who are running for office very worried about getting the police endorsement."

But union leaders and some on the council insist that the deficit worries are exaggerated and that there's plenty of bucks for raises. "We have heard the 'sky is falling' scenario before," fire Capt. Pat McElroy said.

Ugly as it was Tuesday, public life went on as usual Wednesday. Blum was her usual cheery self at an Old Spanish Days luncheon at the Carriage Museum, also attended by Horton and Councilman Brian Barnwell. There was more talk about the proposed baseball park at adjacent Pershing Park than city politics.

Earlier, at Vices and Spices coffee shop, morning regulars were more interested in hashing about "The Da Vinci Code" but managed to crack a few jokes about the mayor-police feud.

"The mayor had better expect a lot of traffic tickets," one regular joked. "Her parking spot behind City Hall will become a big hole," laughed another.


[ SBN-P online edition:
Marty Blum crosses the thin blue line ]