Bargain with transparency

Dave Scoville’s Feb. 26 letter, “Put wage data in context,” questioned the utility of publicizing the pay of Spokane city employees, and celebrated the notion that under healthy collective bargaining “… agreements reached are all a part of a give-and-take process.”

One bit of relevant national context ignored both by the Feb. 15 article “Raising the pay grade” and Scoville’s response is that there is often a direct linkage between the money, including overtime, paid to public workers (notably, but not limited to, police officers and firefighters) in the last year or two before they retire, and the size of their retirement pay.

One whimsical result is an individual’s retirement pay may exceed their active-duty pay. This fancifully lucrative arrangement was discussed by a series of Spokesman-Review articles some months ago, but is largely and deliberately unadvertised, even though it is a prominent long-term factor in financial problems for cities and states that carelessly negotiated unsustainable retirement agreements with public employees, and are now reaping the rewards of “taking” getting the upper hand on “giving.”

There can never be too much transparency regarding collective bargaining when we are paying the tab.

David Fietz

Springdale, Wash.