January 1, 2013        

 

 

From:  The Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations
Contact:  Susan Kniep, President
Website: http://ctact.org/
Email: fctopresident@aol.com
Telephone: 860-841-8032

 

 

 

The Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations Recognizes

 

Flo Stahl

 

President of the Avon Taxpayers Association

 

 

 

Flo Stahl is recognized for being an effective spokesperson and activist not only for her taxpayer organization but for taxpayers throughout Connecticut as she garners  the necessary information to provide taxpayers with the tools they need to determine how and where their tax dollars are being spent.

 

Undaunted in her quest for transparency in government – on all levels - her editorial in 2012 captioned Request for Transparency in Public Sector Union Negotiations explains why taxpayers throughout the State should be making a similar request of their local elected public officials as approximately  80% to 90% of local property taxes pay for the personnel related expenses of Town and Board of Education employees.   These legally binding union contracts are negotiated behind the closed doors of secrecy and instead should be thrust out into the light of public debate.  Instead, taxpayers are ignored in the process, expected to pay their property tax bills, and a failure to do so will result in the loss of their home or business through a tax lien sale. 

 

Flo Stahl’s December, 2013 editorial which focuses on the impact public sector unions have had on Detroit should gives us cause for concern as it relates to Connecticut and the revelation that our State now ranks #2 among the 10 most threatened state pension plans - Slide Show - MarketWatch . 

 

 

The Federation extends a sincere thank you to Flo Stahl for her many years of hard work and we look forward to many more and the information she brings to us. 

 

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Blames Public Unions For Detroit's Woes - Courant.com.

 

Flo Stahl, Hartford Courant, December 05, 2013|Letter to the editor

 

Detroit is like a "Ghost of Municipal Mistakes Past, Present and Future" [Dec. 4, news, "Detroit Ruled Eligible For Bankruptcy Protection"]. The result of compensation largesse enforced by statutes and union pressure, this "Ghost" will come back to haunt every town in Connecticut.

 

Let's be clear about the difference between public and private unions. The Teamsters or the Ladies Garment Workers have little in common with public employees, especially those earning six figures. In the absence of private sector constraints, these employees receive benefits supported perpetually by public tax revenue.

Every municipality wants happy, well-paid employees. After all, service matters. But as revenues are increasingly overwhelmed by compensation agreements, this consideration occurs at the expense of other municipal commitments. Adjustments in co-pays, sick days or other marginal components, while giving negotiators political cover when aggregated, sound wonderful but mean little compared to the cumulative effect of mill rate increases. General wage increases that appear small often obscure escalations and perks that far exceed fiscal caution.

Public unions have come a long way since their "Tiny Tim" days and municipal decision-makers can't hide from this "Ghost" indefinitely. Together they must stop killing the goose that lays those golden eggs.

Florence Stahl, Avon
The writer is president of the Avon Taxpayers Association.

 

http://articles.courant.com/2013-12-05/news/hcrs-17798--20131204_1_ghost-public-employees-avon-taxpayers-association

 

 

 

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Let the Sunshine In!

 

 

A Request for Transparency in

 

Public Sector Union Contract Negotiations

 

 

By Flo Stahl, President of the Avon Taxpayers Association, and Board Member of The Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations, March, 2012

 

 

 

Every year a municipality somewhere in Connecticut implores “yes” and a public union somewhere in Connecticut declares “no.”  What they are doing is negotiating ground rules for expiring contracts and addressing the prickly question of whether these negotiations should be open or closed. By “open” we mean allowing passive observation by community members.

 

It is an intractable stalemate of their own making, since there is no legislation, no understanding, no policy whatsoever that prohibits the public from witnessing these negotiations. All it takes is agreement between the parties. 

 

At a recent negotiation session in Avon, a union lawyer rejected the town’s request, saying “It would be a circus.” If open negotiations are a circus, then the union would be its ring master. With its overwhelming power, any union could extract the most stringent control in exchange for merely allowing people in the room. Yet his statement went unchallenged because no municipality has ever gone to the mat for open negotiations.  Unlike the occasional binding arbitration cases regarding compensation and work rules, there is not one instance of municipal pushback on the issue of open negotiations. And who could blame them? It would require protracted litigation involving the State Labor Relations Board, a dreaded binding arbitration procedure, and advocacy for an intangible called “transparency.”

 

What makes the practice of closed negotiations insidious is that it perpetuates a culture of mystery and opaqueness. This is the same culture that is charged with producing the equivalent of a financial hammer because we live or die by these contract decisions for years. When the secretly negotiated contract finally does become public, its opaqueness continues with language that almost always requires knowledge of prior provisions and terms to make any sense of it.

 

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the United Auto Workers of America, or the United Farm Workers, to name a few, are all free-market labor organizations not reliant on local property taxes for their lifeblood. These fundamentally different, private sector unions exist in a climate of competition-driven consumer choice, global labor variables, and even world monetary policy. It is not a moral imperative that their negotiations be held in the open. Municipal unions, however, are shielded from all these pressures. They are in a special – one might say – honored, relationship with the public they serve.

 

So, why the secrecy? Why the license to repeatedly reject open sessions? One partner in this dialog must acknowledge that closed negotiations are indefensible. It raises profound questions about the union-community relationship and, most damaging, it reveals a cynical mindset toward the public it serves. Let the sunshine in. It’s the right thing to do.