Mayor Adrian Fenty’s budget for next year employs the sleight of hand that would impress a master magician.
Take his proposed use of the funds collected in the plastic bag tax. Fenty and the city council sold us the 5-cent tax on every plastic shopping bag by promising to use the proceeds to clean up the Anacostia River. The bag tax was a snow job: Fenty wants to use the dough to clean streets, rather than the river, so he can help close a half billion-dollar budget shortfall.
That sounds fishy, but it doesn’t worry me as much as the way Fenty stiffs the police in his proposed budget. Look back and you might come to the conclusion that D.C. has been stiffing its cops for years.
The last time our keepers of the peace received a raise in pay was September 2007. At 5 percent, it was not a fat one. Since then, no contract, no raises, no cost of living increases. At least the men and women who stand in harm’s way could count on the occasional “step” increase in pay — until Fenty’s budget.
Under the step system, an officer who moved up in rank and years of service might make an extra $2,500 a year, depending on grade and time of service. Fenty has proposed cutting the increases to save about $4 million.
Is that any way to reward a police force that has helped reduce homicides every year? Can Fenty claim in his campaign that he’s lowered crime but still balance his budget by squeezing the cops?
“It’s the equivalent of the Pentagon giving the military men and women a pay cut when the country is fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” says Adam Clampitt, a city activist who just returned from a year’s deployment in Kabul. “And police departments in the suburbs are hiring.”
And they are hiring our cops.
“The mayor’s budget will increase the exodus,” says union chief Kristopher Baumann. “We are paying to train officers for other departments.”
The council ordered the Metropolitan Police Department to ramp up to 4,200 in 2007; the force can’t seem to make it above 4,000, in part because of the cuts in pay and retirement.
“In one of the worst recessions in memory, we still have officers walking out the door,” Baumann says. “We lost 135 officers since November.”
Baumann is scheduled to plead his case today before the Judiciary Committee. Will the council step up and reinstate step increases for the cops?
“When you start selling out the police, everybody suffers,” Baumann says. “Crime goes up.”
Then politicians start to suffer — mayors and council members.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at [email protected].
