Since becoming Mayor in January 2004, Gavin Newsom has taken a Police budget that was $295 million to $433 million – due to imprudent fiscal decisions. For probably the first time ever, Newsom’s proposed budget this year would put more General Fund money in the Police Department than Public Health. But that’s not just because he’s running for Governor. Newsom’s budget may have no police layoffs (which sells well in Southern California), but a union contract that he signed with the Police Officers Association in 2007 for his re-election is the bigger culprit for the increase. Even a union “give back” he negotiated with the POA to save $10 million this year just defers liabilities for the future, helping some of the best paid cops in the nation. The voters passed a Charter Amendment in 2004 that called for “civilianizing” police jobs, but the Department still has about 500 police officers pushing papers – while the Police Chief says we are at minimum staffing levels of “full duty officers” required under the City Charter. The Mayor’s budget also funds two new Deputy Police Chiefs at $258,000 each – added this year while he made mid-year cuts elsewhere.

POA Contract a Ticking Fiscal Time Bomb

In 2007, the Mayor brokered a contract with the Police Officers Association that raised cop salaries by 23% over a four-year period. Newsom wanted to seal his re-election, and this was not the only generous deal he cut that year with City employee unions (including the firefighters as well.) Some progressive activists protested the agreement, but the media was generally silent about it – focused on the personality fight between Gavin Newsom and Chris Daly that dominated the June 2007 budget battle.

As Randy Shaw wrote at the time, the Mayor’s budget in 2007 gave Police a generous pay hike – while non-profit workers only got a 2.4% cost-of-living-adjustment. A lot of us felt that was unfair, but many of us did not appreciate how the POA deal would end up busting the City budget down the road. This year, Newsom’s proposed budget would raise give another $16 million to the Police, mostly due to the POA agreement. Twelve million of that increase comes from retirement benefits alone. The total salary budget will actually go down this year, but that’s because the Mayor eliminated 264.66 unfilled positions (no cops will get laid off) – which saves the Department $28 million.

Once you factor in savings that come from de-funding those unfilled positions, the Police Department intends to spend $19 million more on raises for the upcoming year. Keep in mind that this figure includes the $10 million “give-back” that Newsom negotiated with the POA before proposing his budget – when he asked all City employee unions to re-negotiate part of their contracts to deal with the shortfall. The Police agreed to delay 2% of their scheduled 6% raise for the coming year, which will be tacked on in 2011. But this year’s 4% raise is so large that the City will have to pay more overtime this year – even though Chief Heather Fong is cutting the total number of overtime hours by 25%.

The POA contract will remain a ticking fiscal time bomb for years. Assuming the Police Department keeps the same number of cops, the salary budget will go up $18.6 million next year, and $13 million the following year. By re-opening their contract, the POA also got Newsom to add a new provision: after the contract ends, the City will do a survey of police salaries in eleven other cities – and guarantee them a 3-5% raise in July 2011. Right now, the starting salary for a San Francisco police officer is a range of $75,868 to $101,556 – well above the average. Even New York, with its higher cost of living, pays their rookie cops only $43,062.

Now the Supervisors want to cut the Police budget by $26 million – which due to the contract can’t be done without layoffs. At a recent Board meeting, a spokesman from the Mayor’s Office claimed the POA agreed to “give back” part of their raises with the understanding there would be no layoffs this year. But Newsom’s budget proposal was just that – a proposal that can be amended. The POA could not have acted with the assumption of no layoffs, and it would have been irresponsible for the Mayor to make such a promise. The Charter requires a minimum number of active duty cops, but the POA contract says nothing about layoffs – which now may be inevitable.

Too Many Cops Doing Civilian Jobs

San Francisco has a Charter provision that requires a minimum of 1,971 full duty sworn police officers. At her presentation last week in front of the Board’s Budget Committee, Chief Heather Fong said the Police Department is currently at about 1,951. But a December 2008 report of the Department showed the City actually has 2,361 police officers. A Beyond Chron review of the Mayor’s proposed Annual Salary Ordinance counted 2,560 officer positions next year – if you count the budgeted number of Police Officers, Inspectors, Sergeants, Lieutenants, Captains and Commanders. The Mayor’s budget also calls for hiring 30 more police officers than what we have now.

Why the discrepancy? Because around 500 officers are getting paid police salaries while doing civilian jobs – which means they are not “fully sworn” and are not counted in the Charter minimum. The jobs these police officers do can be done by civilian employees, who would get paid substantially less and it would save the City a lot of money. The December 2008 report – published by a Washington DC consultant on behalf of the Police Department – compared the number of civilians who work in our force with ten other cities. Civilian employees are about 19-28% of the workforce in most Police Departments (with Oakland at 34.8%), but San Francisco is at less than 10%.

The December 2008 report recommended that specific jobs be civilianized. The Crime Scene Investigation (C.S.I.) selection is staffed by civilians in most cities, but we have 37 sworn police officers working there who could be out walking the beat. The report recommended that the Police Department’s entire Administration Unit be civilianized (with the exception of 27 cops to work in its Training Division.) But the Mayor’s budget would fund 148 police officers, sergeants and lieutenants in Administration – in direct conflict with the report.

Newsom Ignored Mandate for Civilianization

It’s not like cops sitting behind desks and pushing papers is a new complaint among San Franciscans. In March 2004, the voters passed Proposition C – a Charter Amendment to address this problem, which required the Controller to audit the Police Department, identify jobs that can be civilianized and submit the list to the Mayor. But Gavin Newsom was the lone dissenter on the Board of Supervisors in November 2003, when they voted to put Prop C on the ballot. After Newsom was elected Mayor and Prop C passed, Controller Ed Harrington completed the audit in May 2005 – which identified 38 cops working as clerk typists, business analysts and other civilian jobs.

Since 2005, the Police Department identified an additional 85 positions to be civilianized - for a total of 123. But it’s clear that isn’t close to enough – if we still have about 500 police officers doing such tasks for the Department, and the Mayor’s budget funds 148 police officers in the Administration Unit alone. Prop C does not allow the City to lay off these cops in order to replace them with civilians (who get paid less), but they can probably get re-assigned to active duty. The Police Department should not be hiring new police officers when we clearly have more than enough – but instead should be hiring new civilian employees.

The Police Department, however, hasn’t added a civilian position in years. Last year’s budget planned to hire 30 employees, but that was scrapped during mid-year cuts (while 150 new police recruits joined the force last year.) This year, the Mayor’s budget proposes to add 30 new cops, and zero additional civilian jobs. If we go that route, more civilian duties will be taken by police officers who (a) will get paid high salaries (thanks to the raises that Newsom and the POA negotiated), and (b) cannot be laid off and replaced by a civilian employee. In other words, the current staffing plan will only cost the City more in the long run – as we face tougher budget times.

Work Orders Keep Plaguing the System

In December, Newsom made $118 million in “mid-year adjustments” (i.e., cuts) – without formally consulting the Board of Supervisors, because he said the economic crisis made it necessary. But at the same time the Mayor unilaterally cut public health programs that help the poor, he hired two new Deputy Chiefs for the Police Department (at $258,000 a year.) According to the Budget Analyst’s Report, these positions had been cut from the 2008-2009 budget.

How could the Police afford to add these new positions? It was paid through a “Work Order Fund,” which means the Police Department just sent the bill to another City agency. According to the Mayor’s budget for the coming year, the Police will get $14 million in revenue from other departments in “work order services.” Work orders were controversial earlier this year, when the Police was discovered charging the MTA $19 million to patrol buses, and to drive past City parking garages. After the Supervisors threatened to defeat the MTA Budget, the Police agreed to scale back on Muni work orders.

But Muni is still getting charged $12.2 million by the Police – which means the vast majority of the Police’s $14 million “work order” budget is from MTA. Is our public transit system, which is set to raise fares and cut bus service on July 1st, subsidizing the salaries of two Deputy Police Chiefs – at a cost of half a million dollars? Given the Police Department’s fiscal management, that “oughta be a crime.”