A clash between Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett and public employee union officials will come to a head in the liberal stronghold Monday, when a judge is scheduled to decide whether the suburb’s top elected official must honor a budget demanded by labor leaders that he considers unaffordable. In the strange vortex of traditional politics and fiscal reality, Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Robert Greenberg will decide the fate of a union lawsuit filed against Leggett for proposing to slash benefits for general government workers.
The Municipal and County Government and Employees Organization sued Leggett after he refused to honor the legally binding decision of an arbitrator in his $4.3 billion budget. Despite the ruling, Leggett proposed cutting health and pension benefits to help close a $300 million shortfall.
County attorneys argued in court it would be irresponsible to ignore Montgomery’s poor fiscal situation in forcing Leggett to comply with the arbitrator.
“It assumes that the executive is required to, and can be compelled to, recommend an operating budget that fully funds benefits for the approximately 8,000 employees covered by the MCGEO contract, and cheerfully recommend that the council adopt that budget, notwithstanding his conclusion that it is not in the best interest of the county’s nearly one million residents,” Montgomery attorneys said in court papers.
They added, “compelling an individual to affirm a belief that the individual does not hold is repugnant to the principals protected under the First Amendment.”
Labor leaders argue that ignoring mandated negotiations would essentially render collective bargaining useless and allow Leggett to ignore the rule of law.
“Ike Leggett has no integrity; his word means nothing,” said MCGEO President Gino Renne. “Being county executive has gotten to his head. He thinks he has a higher authority than the law. He is certainly not the same person I once knew.”
Regardless of Greenberg’s ruling, the Montgomery County Council will have the final say, as it is not bound by the judge’s or arbitrator’s opinion.
General government employees would pay 2 percent more of their salaries for pension benefits and the county would cover 70 percent instead of 80 percent of the cost of health care plans, under Leggett’s proposal to be reviewed by a council panel beginning Monday.
“What the unions are requesting is not financially feasible,” said Councilman Phil Andrews, D-Gaithersburg/Rockville, adding that school employees should incur similar benefit reductions alongside general government workers. “They have not been willing to make the structural changes needed to benefits and pensions.”
And though she would not commit to reducing employee benefits, Council President Valerie Ervin said state officials provided the council with a template to “model our decision after.”
About 175,000 state workers — mostly teachers — will increase their pension contributions from 5 percent to 7 percent of their income, and their minimum retirement age would climb under a deal struck by the Maryland General Assembly.
