City Hall unions formally agree to take furloughs, avoid layoffs
City Hall
ST. LOUIS — The unions representing City Hall workers have formally agreed to a furlough plan, the mayor’s office announced this afternoon.
According to the agreement — which had been in negotiations for months — rank-and-file city workers will take 40 hours of time off without pay before June 30, 2010. All managers — who are generally higher on the pay scale — will be asked to take twice as much furlough time.
Without the agreement, the city would have had to lay off 70 employees, according to the mayor’s office.
Mayor Francis Slay and the two other members of the city’s Estimate Board — aldermanic President Lewis Reed and Comptroller Darlene Green — first proposed the furlough idea in April, when the trio of elected officials announced that they, too would take a furlough. (Their furlough amounted to a pay cut — it’s unlikely any of the three actually stayed home on their furlough days.)
Even so, the furloughs may just be stopgap rather than a permanent solution. With revenue already down for the current fiscal year, more cuts could be needed in the future.
All relevant City officials received statements from economists warning of business loss due to a City/County smoking ban. Dr. Chad Cotti predicted a 19.7 percent employment loss in the St. Louis City bar industry. Dr. Michael Marlow predicted that up to 54 percent of City restaurants and 83 percent of City bars would suffer revenue loss. Since the County ban will allow smoking in County bars indefinitely, while the City ban allows smoking in bars under 2000 sq. ft. for only five years, the harm to City businesses will be even more severe than predicted. If the City ban goes into effect, how will St. Louis City make up the lost tax revenue?
Hopefully the legal challenge to the St. Louis City Smoke Free Air Act of 2009 will prevail soon and these tax losses will never occur.
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2009/11/effort_to_overturn_st_louis_smoking_ban_would_focus_on_casinos.php
Lay them off they are just sitting around getting a pay check.I agree with bill when this smoking ban goes into affect there will be a big loss of tax revenue.Just look across the river.Vote no to all tax increses they are just spending it like drunken sailors.They always use that 1/2 cent tax increse well add all them tax increses up and see what the ammount is.ENOUGH WITH THE TAX INCRESES .
The Health and Human Services Committee never got an economic impact statement from the Ways and Means Committee concerning the St. Louis City Smoke Free Air Act of 2009.
“Rank and file city workers” and “all managers” is misleading. Thousands of workers are exempt from furloughs. It would be nice to learn which departments, offices, office holders and employees are exempt.
At this time, the only “Exempt” departments are the police & fire…which I for one, am glad they are exempt! However, if they are truly trying to “cut expenses” and/or “decrease expenditures” without decreasing “income”, there are employees who maybe should have been considered “exempt”. That would be the staff who have their paychecks “fully funded” from Grants….Federal, State, or other grants…which means that cutting their pay doesn’t actually “put money” back into the city couffers, as the money for their paychecks don’t come out of city revenue anyway. Truthfully, the city will be losing income…through the earnings tax that will be lost due to “mandatory furloughs” on all city personnel, regardless of where their salaries are funded from. Not too smart on the cities part I think…maybe they need to take the class “penny-pinching 101″ that my momma taught to me as a child.
If the City of St. Louis was enforcing its laws, it would deny business licenses to businesses which are in arrears in property taxes, as us the case with a couple of bars in Soulard. They need to enforce their own laws, and the unions going along with the furloughs shows how stupid the union leadership is. Information about the matter is http://gumbotheforumforsoulard.blogspot.com.
If the City of St. Louis was enforcing its laws, it would deny business licenses to businesses which are in arrears in property taxes, as us the case with a couple of bars in Soulard. They culd increase their revenue by following their own laws. The unions going along with the furloughs without insisting on enforcing laws regarding business licensing shows how stupid the union leadership is. Information about the matter is http://gumbotheforumforsoulard.blogspot.com.