Montgomery County Council members slapped back the county police union Thursday, giving initial approval to a bill that would scale back its power. The bill, which is scheduled to go before the full council Tuesday, gives Police Chief J. Thomas Manger more power to manage administrative and personnel issues — such as requiring employees to regularly check their email — without having to enter collective bargaining with the Fraternal Order of Police union. Union officials strongly oppose the bill, arguing that it amounts to a dismantling of their collective bargaining rights.
“This bill erodes protections for the officers that risk their lives protecting you,” FOP President Marc Zifcak told a council committee Thursday.
The legislation would not affect the union’s bargaining rights over wages, benefits or working conditions, according to the bill’s language.
The hearing exposed a deep-seated friction between the police department and its union.
Asked whether his opposition to the bill is rooted in mistrust of Manger, Zifcak responded with an emphatic “yes.”
“I will be honest with you, I don’t trust management,” he said, sitting less than 10 feet from Manger in the council’s Rockville hearing room. “Tom Manger would prefer not to have to bargain with any employees at all.”
Manger argued that scheduling and equipment assignments are far too inefficient under the current law, which allows the union to approve or kill such measures. Citing an example, he said he can’t require officers to check their email so he is unable to send out scheduling changes online. Enabling email correspondence with officers currently requires collective bargaining.
“It’s very hard for the chief of police to run the police department” without the capability to make administrative changes on the fly, said Councilman Phil Andrews, D-Gaithersburg/Rockville and head of the Public Safety Committee.
In a case when the union objected to a new computerized police reporting system, the police department spent 170 hours over two years in collective bargaining. The department also spent more than two years and 400 hours in collective bargaining over a police dog scheduling issue.
Council members scolded Manger and Zifcak for their divisive bickering.
“Wow, I didn’t know we had so many problems in our police department,” said Councilman George Leventhal, D-at large. “I wish it did not come to this.”
He said the bill may solve an immediate problem, but that the council needs to investigate “what has caused this bad blood in our police department.”
