In the summer of 2006, about 4,000 L.A. city employees went on strike. Sewage treatment workers walked off the job. Pools closed. Two traffic engineers sabotaged the city's computer system.
For Antonio Villaraigosa, who had been elected mayor the year before, it was an important test. He was a product of the labor movement, but now he was the boss. Could he stand up to the unions?
He could. The strike ended after two days, and the city imposed a contract with only modest increases. The L.A. Daily News — which tended to be critical of public-sector workers — ran an approving editorial: "Villaraigosa of all people takes on the unions."
The praise was short-lived. The very next year, Villaraigosa handed a lucrative, five-year agreement to most of the city's civilian workers. Those employees made about $1 billion a year in 2007 — roughly a quarter of the city's entire budget. By 2012, they would get a lavish 25 percent raise.
The city was facing deficits even before the recession hit. When revenues plunged, the contract became an anchor around its neck, forcing furloughs and layoffs. City Hall balanced the budget by shuttering libraries, mothballing ambulances and halting repairs to buckled sidewalks.
In retrospect, the 2007 contract ranks among the worst decisions Villaraigosa made in two terms as mayor — perhaps the worst. He has told staffers that he deeply regrets it. And the full bill has yet to come due. Though the City Hall workforce has shrunk to levels not seen since Tom Bradley was mayor, the city still faces a $216 million deficit next year. Included in that figure is a $66 million bill for employee raises — Villaraigosa's gift to his successor.
"It's a balloon payment which the city cannot afford to make," says Supervisor Zev Yaroslavksy, who last month opted not to run for mayor. "When the next mayor takes office, they're gonna have a financial tiger by the tail."
So what happened to the mayor who was willing to take on the teachers unions and hold firm in the face of a strike? Many factors contributed to the decision, according to interviews with more than a dozen advisers and participants in the negotiations. Among them were the mayor's political ambitions at the time, including the idea of a run for governor in 2010.
But though the buck stopped with the mayor, the contract was a group decision, and it was marked by groupthink. The mayor and his advisers supported it — but so did Bernard Parks, the most anti-labor council member. So, too, did the three major candidates in next year's mayoral election: Controller Wendy Greuel, Councilman Eric Garcetti and Councilwoman Jan Perry. All three were consulted, and all three voted yes.
The summer of 2007 was the summer of Mirthala Salinas — then the mayor's new girlfriend. Though advisers say the end of Villaraigosa's marriage had no effect on his job performance, it took a heavy toll on his public image. He had long been considering a run for governor, but now he had to worry about re-election as mayor.
He would need support from labor for either venture — and he was already tangling with the teachers unions over control of the schools. A coalition of 19 civilian employee unions was threatening to strike if they could not reach a favorable deal, and several advisers worried about the possibility of a midsummer garbage strike.
Villaraigosa wanted to be firm with the unions. But he also believed that the best way to bargain was by building trust and pursuing common interests. He had seen how "mutual gains" bargaining had worked at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and was impressed.
So he hired Rhonda Hilyer, the MTA's consultant, to bring her methods to City Hall. Hilyer's "Resolve" program stressed moving past entrenched positions. To get there, participants had to get to know one another's personalities: Some people were big-picture thinkers, while others were focused on details. Each personality type corresponded to a color. Some people were "reds," others were "blues." Hilyer's firm, Agreement Dynamics, was paid $180,000 to train more than 200 people — mostly union leaders — to identify which colors they were.
This approach met with raised eyebrows not only among the unions but also within the City Administrative Office, the semi-independent office responsible for negotiating contracts. Not surprisingly, Hilyer's methods were not carried through. At some point, the union leaders reverted to positional bargaining, and the city negotiators went along.
"The [union] coalition defined the conversation quickly," one insider says. "We fell for it."
The unions wanted pay raises. Their better-compensated colleagues at the Department of Water and Power had just won a 16 percent increase over five years, and the union coalition wanted to do better than that.
Villaraigosa was not a budget expert, and he was not naturally disposed to getting into the weeds. He relied on his team to let him know whether the agreement was affordable. Some advisers also found the mayor distracted by political ambition.
At closed-door meetings of the city's Executive Employee Relations Committee, Garcetti and Greuel sat on either side of Villaraigosa. They, too, asked questions and probed the city's negotiators. No major differences emerged between the three of them. They presented a "thoughtfully unified" front, in the words of one witness.
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Tony is a self serving opportunist who must never get elected to higher office. I think the people know better by now. I'll say it again- Tony is a publiicity 'ho who needs his own reality show, that way he could suck up the attention, get lots of free tickets and be the "star" he has always wanted to be.
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The charlatan has been hard at work to avoid a bankruptcy before he leaves. Well, even tricky Antonio may not succeed. After all is he not " MAYOR FAILURE" ?
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The people elected him. Twice. Bankruptcy is the only way out at this point, as anyone running as an independant on a campaign of fiscal responsibility would be savaged by the unions.
For the record, the city union that waged that strike but went unidentified in this article, was the Engineers And Architects Association. I handled media strategy for that strike, and we were the second and third story on local news for three days. The strike was meticulously planned and executed by EAA leader Robert Aquino who has since left the union. It would have been nice to mention these facts since you led with their effort to bring about a fair contract that this article details.
This EMPTY SUIT has been/IS screwing Los Angeles over & over & over~~~DISGUSTING!! This
EMPTY SUIT has gotten FREE ticket$, went on his then wife as she lay w/ cancer... Alllllll I can
PRAY 4 IS KARMA!! Ole villar IS WORTHLESS!!!!
The public sector labor unions seem to forget that salaries will have increased 35% during the Villaraigosa era. So givebacks and sacrifices are all relative.
As for the budget, the projected deficit of $216 million next year and the $1.1 billion over the next four years do not reflect adequate funding for our streets and infrastructure. Nor does it take into consideration proper funding for the city's two pension plans that have an unfunded liability of $10 billion.
The Mayor Who Broke LA is another moniker for the 11% Mayor.
It would be nice if reporters would point out the details of how city workers have worked with city management by 1) renegotiating their contract two years ago to eliminate some raises and defer others 2) agreeing to pay more for retirement contributions 3) paying more for healthcare 4) furloughs. City Attorneys, for example, have given up nearly 15% of their salary in the last three years annually to furloughs. That is rarely, if ever reported. Keep in mind that City Attorney's in LA review 100,000 criminal cases a year, defend police in federal court and do all the civil work for the airport, Port of LA, and DWP. That work has not slowed or been reduced. LAPD has not been furloughed. Police and Fire are 70% of the City general fund budget but not 70% of the cuts. Some balanced information would be nice to counter the perception that City workers are unwilling to help with the City's financial problems.
@Budgetwatcher Budgetwatcher? "Moneytaker" is more like it. City workers took too much, and have no cause to pat themselves on the back for "deferring" some of the excess. Or for their contract that slapped LA with a multi-million dollar penalty if excess workers were laid off. Or for boasting of "furloughs"--non-paid time off. In the real world, you do the same work for less pay. New York in the 1970's, Detroit now, and LA not far behind. That is the legacy of public worker unions, and the craven pols who allowed them to run the city instead of working for the city.
I don't suppose that the millions of dollars which is owed to LAPD officers is part of the $216 million deficit.
The arrangement worked out between Mayor Villaraigosa and the Police Union and approved by the City Council is another example of kicking the problem down the road while grinning.
They agreed to drastically raise the cap on banked hours for LAPD.
Which means the City of Los Angeles owes a huge amount of back pay to our police, an amount which is growing every day.
They call it "banked hours". It is simply accrued wages that the cops have agreed to wait longer for us to send the check. Its a liability on the City's balance sheet. How much do we owe the cops right now?
Your $216 million deficit is probably closer to $500 million, in reality.
The mayor is an idiot and so are all city employees especially dwp workers bunch of greedy SOB!
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