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Pay raise problems resolved

Jeremy M. Lazarus | 8/4/2017, 7:51 a.m.
The salary snafu at City Hall has been resolved. Police officers and firefighters are to receive their delayed raises on ...

The salary snafu at City Hall has been resolved.

Police officers and firefighters are to receive their delayed raises on Friday, Aug. 11, when the next city paychecks are issued, according to Mayor Levar M. Stoney’s press secretary, Jim Nolan.

The raises will be retroactive to July 8, Mr. Nolan and other city officials said.

“The administration is now focused on what is important: Getting police and firefighters the raises the mayor proposed —and they deserve — as soon as possible,” Mr. Nolan stated Tuesday in making the disclosure in response to a Free Press query.

The issue arose last week when it came to light that the long-awaited raises — including step increases — would not be included in July 28 paychecks as expected.

The mayor first learned about the delay on July 25, his staff said.

The resolution approved by City Council authorizing the pay raises came faster than previously expected; the raises were not expected until the last paycheck in August.

However, the snafu appears to be another example of the problems that plague the administration and that were detailed in a performance review report that Mayor Stoney commissioned and released in May.

That report, which VCU’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs prepared, found that the city government, led by Chief Administrative Officer Selena Cuffee-Glenn, staggers under “excessive bureaucracy, excessive delays and sometimes poor leadership that has led to a system that is not as agile, responsive internally or externally or as skillful as it should be for Richmond to become the city it could be.”

Based on interviews and documents provided to the Free Press, the administration knew in early May about the need to calculate the exact dollars and cents required to provide raises for the estimated 1,000 police officers and firefighters who would qualify for the pay increases.

But the work apparently remained incomplete or incorrect as of July 26, according to one email.

It remains unclear whether the city Department of Human Resources had too few people to handle the work or if something else was missing. The emails do not provide answers, and the administration has declined to discuss the matter.

Mayor Stoney and City Council had made increasing pay for front-line public safety employees a top priority in the new 2017-18 budget that was approved in mid-May, with other employees’ pay needs put on hold to make it happen.

The mayor provided $2.3 million in his proposed budget to provide smaller pay raises particularly for veterans in both the police and fire departments, and council scrambled to cut spending in other parts of the budget to generate an additional $2.1 million to make the pay hikes more generous.

Initially, it seemed the administration was on track. On or after July 8, the Free Press has confirmed, police officers and firefighters were able to see via city computer how much the raise would impact their individual paycheck.

But the information was pulled back just a few days before the paychecks were to be issued and the raises were canceled to the dismay of both the mayor and council members.

It appears the city administration pulled back the raises after discovering that overtime hours had not been included in the calculations, requiring a redo.

Keith Andes, president of the Richmond Firefighters Association, said he understood that to be the case. Ms. Cuffee-Glenn and other members of the administration declined to respond to Free Press queries.

Initially, Mayor Stoney and his spokesman, Mr. Nolan, blamed a new policy council approved for the snafu — that a City Council vote was needed to transfer the money for the raises.

However, City Council sought advice from the city attorney and learned that the administration had all the authority it needed. More importantly, the administration also had all the money it needed to pay the raises on time. The new budget year began July 1, and personnel accounts were flush with cash.

City Council had scheduled special meetings for Friday, July 28, and Monday, July 31, to receive emergency legislation to clear the way for the raises. But both times, the administration asked Council President Chris Hilbert to cancel the meetings.

According to several emails, the real problem involved the administration’s inability to provide the dollar and cents cost of the raises.

The council’s budget staff requested the information several times, but was told that such specifics were unavailable. Even the city’s budget office could not get the information and could only provide an estimate to council’s budget staff.

Mayor Stoney ended the blame game last Thursday. He sent a letter to every police officer and firefighter, accepting responsibility for the delay and promising a swift resolution.

He wrote: “When it became apparent that the processing of more than 1,000 individual increases was taking longer than expected, we should have communicated that delay to you sooner.

“You and your families have a right to be upset — I know I would feel exactly the same way. Your sacrifice and commitment deserve our support and appreciation. We can and will do better.”

Second District Councilwoman Kim B. Gray, who authored the council policy, said this week that she is “delighted the issue is being resolved and that the finger-pointing has ended.”

She said the council’s new transfer policy was designed to protect the funding for the raises and to ensure that the money was used for the intended purpose. She said the new policy also has allowed council to have a better view of departmental spending, which had not been previously available.

Ms. Gray said she hopes the administration has solved the glitches because the raises represent just the first step in a three-year effort to boost police officers’ and firefighters’ salaries.