Navigating Pay Raises In Sherwood’s Forest–Slater: Concessions Fund Raises

City Budget Director Tom Sherwood sounds like he was locked in a room for weeks with City Attorney Mark Anastasi. That can make anyone’s speech pattern unrecognizable. Think Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. That’s what is known as Anastasi-speak. The city’s budget builder told CT Post scribe Keila Torres Ocasio there’s nothing unusual about city employee pay raises not being reflected in the budget book for the year granted.

“Although a budget is a process, the charter and other circumstances require development of appropriations at a point in time, making the budget a static document,” Sherwood said. “We understand that the normal course of government business forces the city to make adjustments to staffing for city services. These adjustments are within current fiscal year allocations. We keep the council informed and adjustments and changes are properly reviewed. Through that process, we adjust accordingly.”


And, in a I-think-I-don’t-remember moment City Councilman Warren Blunt, who’s also a city employee, apparently didn’t know he voted to approve raises for himself and other city employees who serve on the council. In the unique world of the city’s legislative body that also approves the budget, city employees who serve on the council also approve their own wages and benefits. Not a bad deal, eh!

He said he wasn’t sure why the raises weren’t included in last year’s budget. He attributed his own raise to additional responsibilities he took on last year after he received his master’s degree in public health from Southern Connecticut State University.

Read Keila’s entire story here.

Republican Town Chair John Slater weighs in:

Republican Town Chairman, John Slater today criticized Mayor Bill Finch and the Democratic City Council for using potential union concessions to offset the cost of raises illegally granted last year to mayoral appointees and members of his staff.

“This is another example of this administration’s contempt for the Bridgeport taxpayers and the City Charter, Slater said. These raises were not included in last year’s city budget, but they were approved anyway. That clearly violated the charter and probably state law. It also increased the city budget shortfall in the coming year by almost $100,000.”

Faced with the need to cover that shortfall the all-Democratic City Council has added insult to injury by using potential concessions from unionized workers in order to pay for these raises. It is the height of hypocrisy for this administration and the City Council to ask hard-working, lower paid, civil service, employees to accept reduced pay and benefits, in order to pay for illegal raises, some of them in the tens of thousands of dollars, for the politically well-connected.

Slater said that instead of ratifying the Mayor’s illegal action the Council should roll back the raises and take action to prevent similar un-budgeted raises from being granted in the future.

The City can and should seek appropriate concessions from employee unions as part of a plan for addressing the city’s financial problems. But any savings resulting from those concessions should be used to reduce the tax increase approved by the Council, not to reward friends and supporters of the Mayor.

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17 comments

  1. So unionized workers, some whom live paycheck to paycheck, get furloughs while six-figure no-showers get raises? Sounds like smart fiscal spending if you aren’t seeking re-election, NO?

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  2. This administration has been raping the citizens of Bridgeport for years. Tom Sherwood and Mark Anastasi are the ringleaders. Sherwood screws with the figures and Anastasi makes up the rulings to fit the situation.
    Warren Blunt makes $99,000 for what? Waddling from one place to another. Blunt is lucky breathing is automatic otherwise he wouldn’t be here. I am not surprised he forgot and voted for his own raise.
    I don’t care what excuses these robber barons come up with, this shit has to be illegal through and through.
    It is time for the unions to tell the mayor Fuck You, lay us off. In all probability the first layoffs will be people put in union jobs because of politics.

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  3. The most charitable thing I can say about the comments of both Tom McCarthy and Tom Sherwood is they demonstrate a contempt for the city charter, the budget process and Bridgeport taxpayers. Perhaps worse, they seem to believe any explanation, however ludicrous, is enough.
    The facts do not seem to be in dispute. The pay increases were approved by Mayor Finch during the 2012 – 2013 fiscal year, despite the fact, in McCarthy’s own words, funding for the salary increases was “not reflected” in the city budget. And that’s the beginning of the problem.
    Contrary to this administration’s approach, the city budget is both an authorization to spend money and a prohibition on spending money that has not been appropriated. The language of the charter is clear and unambiguous. Section 3 of Chapter 9 (Fiscal Controls) provides, in part, “No money, other than that appropriated pursuant to Section 5 of this chapter shall be expended for any purpose, unless a special appropriation therefore by the city council shall first be approved by a two-thirds vote, taken by yeas and nays, of all members of the city council.”
    In this case, there was no appropriation in the original budget and there was no special appropriation. In short the salary increases were expressly prohibited by the charter and were, and are, illegal. Instead of trying to find ways to justify the raises the Council should be taking steps to roll them back.
    But Tom Sherwood sees nothing wrong with what was done. As Lennie has noted, he told the Connecticut Post of that:
    “Although a budget is a process, the charter and other circumstances require development of appropriations at a point in time, making the budget a static document,” Sherwood said. “We understand that the normal course of government business forces the city to make adjustments to staffing for city services. These adjustments are within current fiscal year allocations. We keep the council informed and adjustments and changes are properly reviewed. Through that process, we adjust accordingly.”
    He is partially correct. Circumstances do change and budgets have to be adjusted from time to time. The charter anticipates that and provides a means for doing it which goes beyond keeping the council informed. Specifically, Section 5(i) of the same chapter of the charter provides that:
    “Transfers between line items of the adopted budget may be requested by the mayor, the director of policy and management or the head of any budgeted agency and be approved by the affirmative vote of a majority of the council members present and voting. Such transfers may be disapproved in the manner set forth in Chapter 5 of this charter.”

    In short, the mayor was required to request, and the Council was required to approve, the transfer of funds necessary to cover the cost of the salary increases. Until they did there were no funds available and the salary increases were illegal.

    One final note, the City Council’s decision to use “union concessions” to offset the cost of these raises is an insult to the hard-working civil servants, making far less than these Friends of Bill, who would see their salaries and benefits reduced in order to pay for pay raises for the politically well-connected.

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    1. Let’s see the City Council members duck this one. You mean there is more in the Charter they are neither observing nor objecting to, Phil? Imagine that.
      I guess you would have to look at City financial reports monthly and expect them to be updated as to variances if you were on the City Council. Maybe, just maybe, you could understand what a transfer of funds might mean in that case. But let’s think about it, perhaps if you voted to pad department budgets with vacant positions, year in and year out, them maybe there is enough room to provide raises within the departmental line items. Would you need a transfer vote then?

      Phil, your thoughts on this? I know your thoughts are more profound than those that emanate from the City legal augury. But you care about fairness and process, rather than accomplishing what the Mayor wishes, regardless of what it does to other parties or to precedent in the future.

      This almost looks like an occasion where the City has failed to follow its own process, knowingly. Wonder how the majority of City workers feel about this. Maybe we will soon learn. And then … time will tell.

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        1. So you understand the City Attorney is involved “in the interpretation of omens?” That’s why almost any request for anything (good or evil is covered by the word omen) passes through his office, so he can ask for the submission of the request in FOI form. (And then not act on it in any timely or meaningful way. Thus earning my naming this the “FOI Dance.”) Of course sometimes we get lucky and get good info in alternative ways. Time will tell.

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      1. JML,
        In theory, excess funds in an agency’s personnel line item could have been used for pay increases granted to that department’s employees. In that case a transfer would not be required.

        Of course, once the funds were used they would not be available for other purposes.

        As far as the transfer process is concerned, I am puzzled by Tom Sherwood’s comments about “keeping the Council informed” about budget transfers because the Charter clearly requires transfers between line items be approved, not just reviewed by the Council.

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  4. I think what Messrs. Sherwood and Wood are saying is this administration Serves Itself. Now how convenient is that?
    I think the taxpayers are getting the wood on this one again.
    Let’s not forget co-chair Sue Brannelly, she “heard you.” Did she really???

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  5. This was the talk of the town today among union workers. Labor Relations has lost all credibility. If they seriously think they can take their raises on one hand and ask for union concessions with the other, they are sadly mistaken. NAGE said no the last time around and others will be joining them this time around. Adam and Andy can threaten and intimidate all they want. Go for it, fellas!

    The justification for the increases is a joke. Warren Blunt finally got his masters degree after what? Ten years? For that he deserves a raise? Many employees further their education and take professional development courses at their own expense and on their own time and they do not receive increases. Tyrone took on the duties of a lobbyist. Seriously? What gives him the qualifications to lobby anything? What clout does he have? PLEASE! Larry Osborne? Director of Labor Relations with no law degree or legal training whatsoever yet he gets an increase so his salary is equal to those in comparable jobs in other towns. Perhaps the people in the comparable jobs are qualified for the positions they hold. Osborne is obviously not.

    Lennie called Sherwood’s gibberish Anastasi-speak, the employees know it is really Sherwood-speak. This is how he runs circles around the City Council members with his lying nonsense as they sit there like bobbleheads. Shame on the City Council especially the employees who voted for their own raises and budget chair Sue Brannelly who voted on a raise for her brother-in-law. This would not happen any place else except the COB.

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  6. *** For city employees the bottom line is, “get what you can whenever you can get it,” no questions asked! Many “good” city employees have been lied to, shortchanged and promised low to high % raises in contract deals which either take forever or never happen at all! So in many cases they’re just catching up to the times around them; so is it any wonder the more educational paper an employee might earn to hang on their office desk area wall, the less work they’re willing to do and for more money, no? Then there are the ones who get rewarded for their political alliance or who they’re related to or know! So keeping accurate financial records concerning pay raises is “not” nor has been a city government priority. Ms. Torres should do a bit of investigative research in this area and also talk to other newsworthy reporters for a city-to-city comparison to see if it’s not really needed to be included in the city budget’s transparency procedures so taxpayers are aware. *** NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON’T ***

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    1. Mojo, with most City workers there is no catching up because of their new union contract. Even if they get a pay raise they will not see the increase in their paycheck because of the large percentage increase they now pay towards their health benefits.

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  7. The ordinance amendment that allowed the mayor to give raises to his appointed staff, including council president/assistant labor relations director McCarthy was a fast-track action in February 2012. The ordinance committee, co-chaired by two city employees (Blunt, Paoletto) managed to have a meeting quorum and public hearing followed by the vote of the full city council in a two-week period. They can act quickly when they have their marching orders and when they stand to have an increase in their salary.
    McCarthy actually abstained from voting in full council after he had made arrangements for sufficient yes votes.
    Did the city council review any job/salary analysis used to determine the new salaries? Do any council members know what a job or salary analysis is? Our watchdogs in action.

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