Goldner - One More Campaign Payoff

On Tuesday the Fort Wayne City Council will vote to decide to over ride Mayor Henry’s veto of creating a new board exclusively to oversee the Fort Wayne Fire Department.

The new “Fire Board” will take over the work the Board of Safety has done for decades. While this new board was debated before the council there was not one case presented where the Board of Safety made an error. There was no listing of any chronic problems the Board of Safety.

Here is the deal. Currently the Board of Safety is composed of three appointed people by the Mayor. Recently Mayor Henry expanded it to include five members. The additional spots where filled by a retired police officer and retired firemen.

The new “Fire Board” would have five members. Three members would be picked by the Mayor and two remaining spots picked by the firemen. So any time an issue came up if the two union firemen did not agree with the Mayor all they needed to do is sway one of the tree other members to vote with them. In a nut shell, the Mayor no longer had true control over terminations, suspensions, working rules, and so forth. All three of his appointments would need to agree to carry out the wishes of the Mayor or the Fire Chief.

Keep in mind conditions for termination, suspension and work rules is part of the contract the firemen have with the City. The board only agrees if any violation took place.

This is going to add one more layer of government in the way of the new “Fire Board” and give the Mayor and his Fire Chief less control over it. Also this board will need materials, meeting place, someone to type up papers and so forth there is a few thousand dollar annual cost. That is unless the city has to pay the fire fighters when they are at the meetings or doing work for the board. Then we could see this new board costing maybe ten grand a year.

The police still operate under the Board of Safety and one can guess, and rightfully so, they will want a board set up the same way. I would guess it would be called the Police Board. As outlined above the Mayor will loose control and the city is faced with maybe an additional ten grand a year. It would take an unamaious vote on behalf of the Mayor's appoitment to to make sure the Mayor's wishes are carried out.

Coming to the station under the influence, which if I am right, draws a suspension and possibility of being fired. With the new make up the firemen charged by the Chief and is one of the “good old buddies in the union” he may not serve any suspension. The two firemen vote to take care of their buddy and only need one of the Mayor’s three appointments to “protect” the guy.

Goldner was endorsed by the fire fighter’s union when she ran for the 2nd district council spot. I BELIEVE BUT NOT DEAD NUTS SURE that the union also gave her a financial donation. That some firemen may have assisted in her campaign and this may be in kind donation.

I am not sure if any other council members received the fire union endorsement or financial donations to their campaigns. That would be for them state in public over people having to go and retrieve campaign records.

One has to ask the following:

1- If a person receives a campaign donation directly for union or its political action committee would a council person have to excuse them self from voting?

2- Unless there is some legal reason, to which the public has not been told about then why is this being done? There appears to be nothing wrong and there is a binding contract in place that limits what the Board of Safety can do. So what is the problem?

3- Adding two boards with ten members the cost (if officers and firemen are paid) couple approach ten to twenty grand when everything is figured in. In tough times is this what we want to saddle on the public?

4- This action will reduce this mayor’s and all future mayors’ control over these two very public departments. Is that what council wants for now and in the future?

One would hope that after thinking about this that members of council support the Mayor and veto this bill.