Voters To Decide Union Issue Ruling Clears Way For Tuesday’S Special Election

Voters, not the courts, should decide whether city workers have collective bargaining rights, a District Court judge ruled Tuesday.

For the second time in two months, Judge Gary M. Haman denied attempts by the City Council and the mayor to delay an election on the grounds that a city employees’ initiative is illegal and unconstitutional.

It makes no sense to rule on the legality of a law before it becomes a law, Haman said. Moreover, having voters decide whether to grant collective bargaining rights is no different from the City Council making that decision.

“I think a better way of proceeding is to let the election proceed,” Haman said. “If it’s defeated, that’s all she wrote.”

Tuesday’s special election could be just one more landmark in a yearlong dispute over whether city employees should have collective bargaining rights. The City Council repealed the law that allowed bargaining last March.

Workers responded by gathering enough signatures to put the matter of restoring collective bargaining to a vote. If voters approve the measure, the city likely will take the fight back to court.

Haman’s ruling pleased the Lake City Employees Association and the Coeur d’Alene Police Officers Association.

“As far as we are concerned, the important thing was to defeat this continued effort to keep the people from voting,” said Scott Reed, attorney for the employee groups.

Councilman Chris Copstead, who attended Tuesday’s court hearing, had the opposite reaction.

“I’m disappointed with the whole (initiative) process,” Copstead said. “I think so many of the issues have been clouded.

“With voter apathy in this country, to run an election on a single issue the first part of February, it’s going to satisfy special interest groups and that’s it,” Copstead said.

“I don’t think it’s going to show a true consensus of the voting public.”

Disputes about the initiative revolve around whether city workers are too generously compensated.

Hale Ashcraft started buying newspaper ads more than two weeks ago, under the name of Coeur d’Alene Citizens for Responsible Government.

Ashcraft’s ads basically say the workers already receive plenty of money and too much vacation pay and sick leave.

“To me, enough is enough,” said Ashcraft, who said he decided to run the ads while at his coffee klatch one morning.

Ashcraft, a retired car dealer, California legislator and former chairman of California’s Worker’s Compensation Board, isn’t saying how many members his group has.

Rob Turner, president of the Police Officers Association, said Ashcraft exaggerated the figures. Paula Payne, president of Lake City Employees, agrees. Beyond that, “Are they comparing us to Burger King employees?” she said, questioning the average salary figures used.

The median salary for city workers is $36,000, said John Austin, city finance director. There are just as many people above that as below it.

The average annual wage for workers who live in Kootenai County was $22,049 in 1997, the most recent year data is available, said Kathryn Tacke, a labor analyst with Job Service. But using that as a benchmark is difficult because it includes all part-time and full-time workers in all jobs.

Because tourism dominates the local economy, many workers are unskilled and only work seasonally, Tacke said.

“The skill levels for most city jobs are higher than the skill levels for most jobs out there,” she said. “For the city, a greater proportion of the people who work there are college-educated.”