I wrote a column two weeks ago about the police and collective bargaining in Galveston, and the reaction has been furious.
Among hundreds of comments, few actually addressed the issues raised in the column. Instead, people argued furiously and often with a tone of blustery self-righteousness against things I did not say. Some roundly condemned me for things I hadn’t done.
For example, one said I smashed unions at the newspaper when I arrived here in 1987. There were no unions. I didn’t smash them.
I also never said that the police are “overpaid.” That’s somebody else’s word. In fact, I made a conscious effort not to make a judgment about whether the police do good work or bad or are brave or cowardly.
For people rescued by police from the waters of Hurricane Ike, the value of Galveston cops may seem quite high. But, for wedding guests beaten or tasered at a recent brawl, the value could be calibrated differently.
Those are subjective judgments that don’t have much to do with my point.
What I said was that the average Galveston police-union member, when you add together pay, overtime and the cost of benefits, makes about $71,000 a year — more than twice the median household income in Galveston.
My comments were not about “value.” They were, instead, about the ability of Galveston’s poorer-than-average population to pay — two very different things.
One woman wrote that she just couldn’t see a relationship between household income and police pay. Really?
Here’s the relationship: No matter the value, somebody’s got to pay the bill.
In Galveston, the people paying the bill were, before Hurricane Ike, much poorer than the average Texan. After Ike, they’re fewer in number and poorer still.
Surely, police apologists can see that the value of police work — and everything else the government does — is constrained by whether taxpayers have enough money in their pockets to pay the tab.
But, unlike everything else, the public-safety unions present a special problem because they have great political power and consume a disproportionate share of the city’s budget.
That probably seems more relevant to the taxpayers of Galveston than it does to the police themselves. More than half of the force chooses to live in other cities, and therefore those cops pay no property taxes in the city of Galveston.
I also never wrote that Galveston should immediately fire a bunch of cops or further cut their pay. However, if city revenues drop as much as expected, a financial reckoning may come soon, this summer, as the city struggles with its budget for the year ahead.
Galveston likely will face crucial decisions about how to use very scarce public resources. The more Galveston pays each individual policeman or fireman, the fewer there may be to protect the city.
The problem is simple arithmetic. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether one likes men in uniform or not.
What I hope is for the city council, as it grapples with financial problems sure to come, to carefully consider the role of collective bargaining in driving up the cost of living for every taxpayer in Galveston.
The city of Galveston should exercise sound business judgment in its financial dealings with all employees — but especially with its politically powerful public-safety unions.
Dolph Tillotson is president and publisher of The Daily News.
