Welp.
Controller Chris Hollins
The proposed $1.5 billion settlement and labor contract with the Houston firefighters union appears unlikely to be certified in time for Wednesday’s scheduled City Council vote because a lengthy list of questions Controller Chris Hollins sent Mayor John Whitmire about the deal have not been answered.
Hollins sent the mayor 44 questions on Monday, giving the administration a tight deadline to produce answers before Wednesday morning’s council session. The questions seek basic information about the deal’s estimated cost to the city, as well as more intricate details, including specific triggers for firefighter bonuses he says were not included in the draft his office received last week.
The city charter requires the controller to certify the availability of funding for ordinances prior to a council vote committing the city to future financial obligations. Hollins said he would not certify the deal without answers to each of his 44 questions, something his office had not received Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s my job to make sure that we ensure complete transparency, and that includes having these questions answered,” Hollins said Tuesday afternoon. “I would not be doing my job if we let this off our desk without getting our questions answered.”
In a Tuesday evening response to Hollins, Whitmire declined to answer many of the questions, citing the confidential legal negotiations that produced the eventual settlement. Whitmire warned Hollins that a failure to certify before Wednesday’s meeting risks millions of dollars from the city’s budget. He said his office spent Tuesday writing its response and would provide more answers to City Council members later in the evening.
“To be clear, by not certifying this agreement and allowing City Council to conduct their legislative duty you are risking fire and EMS operations for all Houstonians, as well as jeopardizing the entire negotiated settlement,” the mayor wrote.
He also said the city had until June 19 to approve the agreement, ending the letter, “My team stands ready to answer any additional questions you may have, and I look forward to being able to vote on this item tomorrow.”
Whitmire, who campaigned for mayor last year on a promise to end the firefighter back-pay dispute, announced the deal in March. Since then, details about the settlement and collective bargaining agreement had been sparse prior to the 123-page CBA being signed and published June 3.
Hollins said his office worked as quickly as possible to review the terms and draft his questions in the week since those details became public.
[…]
In his letter, Hollins asks Whitmire to confirm the back-pay settlement’s $650 million price tag, the cost of legal bills, as well as the number of firefighters eligible to receive the back-pay. He also seeks additional clarity about the negotiations that delivered the settlement, asking Whitmire how many concessions the city and the firefighters’ union offered prior to the two sides coming to an agreement.
According to Hollins, the CBA lacks details about “escalators,” or funding benchmarks that, if met, could trigger pay raises for the union’s members. Without details about the types of new revenue that would trigger the pay raises, it could lead to further litigation between the city and the union down the road, Hollins said.
Hollins urged Whitmire to provide details of the triggering conditions or negotiate them prior to the deal being ratified by council.
Hollins also is seeking clarification from Whitmire about some of the CBA’s non-financial terms, including changes to Civil Service Commission rules that would allow the firefighters’ union to select half of the board’s members and a requirement that any termination achieve a unanimous vote by the board’s members. The change effectively would give the firefighters veto power over major discipline.
See here for the previous update. Just so we’re clear, the agreement was announced on February 29. The price tag, as stated by Mayor Whitmire and the HPFFA, was announced on March 14. Controller Hollins gave his estimate of the price tag, based on then-available information, on March 26. In an interview with CityCast Houston published on April 15, Hollins stated that he had not seen a copy of the agreement yet. The settlement agreement was approved by the judge on May 24. Hollins received a copy of the deal last Monday, June 3, more than three months after the city’s initial agreement with the firefighters. There was plenty of room in the timeline for him to have gotten the details before then.
If the deal isn’t brought up for a Council vote today, then it will come up again next Wednesday, the 19th. Mayor Whitmire’s job between now and then is to get his ducks in a row. We’ll see how he does.
June 19th is Junteenth, I don’t see council meeting that day.
As an old houstonian I’ve been through epic mayors-controllers battles at least two times before (k.whitmire v. Lalor, Lanier v. Greanias).
Case law ( in both battles) says that the controller cannot veto city financial actions that have been voted on, affirmatively, by council.
In both cases, the controller refused to certify bonds, council voted to issue them, they went to court, which ruled in favour of the mayor-council.
Regardless of what Turner is telling Hollins behind the scenes, if this battle goes to it’s conclusion, that is how it will end.
How do we go about replacing John Whitmire with Chris Hollins ?
Six months in and the (current) Mayor (still) doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing.
Greg, could you provide how those court cases were titled? I have trouble believing anyone that supports a MAGA puppet.
I have been in Houston and don’t recall those cases. Certainly not as you state them.
Whitmire could sue Hollins and let the case wind through the courts. Or maybe Hollins will sue if Whitmire attempts to approve a budget without the Controller’s certification.
Whitmire is to blame. What is he hiding? Does he not want to respond to what seems sensible requests? What is Whitmire hiding?
C.L., we agree that there is hope in Houston.
The previous administration limited the City Council’s involvement in this negotiation and the Union operated under those extreme terms. Now it’s unheard of that the City Council wants involvement? It’s unrealistic to expect one party to operate under one set of guidelines and then at the last minute bre expected to operate under a different set of guidelines when legal ground rules have been set previously for ongoing mediation. But know this, this is the portion that won in court and it is not going away.
People were falling asleep and dismissing this issue when it was going through court, now it’s in the foremost of their minds? If you didn’t care then, don’t care now.
Nothing was won in court; Whitmire laid down and rolled over to give the firefighters everything they wanted.
I live in Houston and have lived here since 1969, do you live in Houston David?
I don’t begrudge the firefighters their fair due, but FAIR is the keyword.
Like I said manny, if you didn’t care to pay attention when it was going through the court, don’t care now.
Really, DF? Hope all ffs are not like you, if they are then they don’t deserve anything.
Yes, really
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I’m not sure why it matters where the FFs live or why any of us should get upset over the resident FF troll’s slanted views enough to take it out on the average FF. The last two administrations dragged this out for years. Due to the mutual animosity of the parties, particularly the last administration and the union, it was apparent the negotiations via court battle were not another political payoff.
Fast forward to the new administration where Mayor Whitmire was a long time paid advocate for the FFs, having personally helped push through binding arbitration on the city in fact. He refuses to answer questions presented by council members and the City Controller, has denied them access to the final version of the proposal, and gives them last minute updates to make a momentous decision that will impact the city and every other financial decision to be made for the next 25 – 30 years.
Any question is met with the kind of answer that would offend any of us and the utter lack of transparency a complete turnaround from the campaign promises made last year. As such, whether people left it up to the courts to decide all the presented issues or not, now that the bill is handed us, of course we care about the details. The continued threats by the Mayor and union aren’t particularly motivating either but Charles is right, the tightness between the parties and their longstanding relationship do indeed raise questions that should be answered by old One and Done Whitmire.
You’d think the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the union given some of the comments our resident troll has made except they ruled Prop B was not valid. At this point, and given some of the operational control the Mayor is handing over to the union, I’d rather scrap this whole thing and take my chances in court.
You couldn’t be more wrong. The firefighter pay dispute has gone all the way to the Supreme Court and the city lost every case.
The instruction from the courts was to make firefighters whole from 2017.
You don’t know as much as you think you do. At the same time that the Supreme Court rules Prop B invalid they ruled that the city negotiated in bad faith. The judge was prepared to rule on damages before this settlement was agreed upon. The city’s own attorney has said if the settlement hadn’t happened then the court would have ruled and it would have cost the city more.
Turner kicked the can down the road for 8 years. Turner lost in court time and time again. The cost to the city wouldn’t have been this large if Turner would have done his job.
Turner put this problem on Whitmire.
You are completely wrong. The city lost in district court, appeals court, and the Supreme Court over improper collective bargaining. The court ruled to make the firefighters whole from 2017
Even the city’s own attorney said the cost will be higher without the settlement.
Sam, there’s no need to repeat the lie so often as it lends you no credibility. The back pay issue was agreed upon by Mayor Whitmire, the court never made such a determination. As for the track record of your union winning court battles, your primary battle since Proposition B was to get a specific form of pay parity and you lost repeatedly in the courts at every level. That doesn’t mean you were without any wins, the city’s argument on binding arbitration was heavily flawed from the beginning, but look how long it took to even come up to the trial level.
One and done Whitmire handed you any recent win by declaring he was going to end the battle. Most people accept this was because your group helped him win the election and had hired him for years as an advocate. Any declaration by the city attorney was certainly guided by the Mayor’s desire, the legal exposure of the city yet to be determined by the court on the latest round. You can claim anything you want as often as you want but the various court records and media accounts prove you wrong. I’m not going to argue with you given you have such a distorted recollection of how the legal battles went over the years, enjoy your raises for having backed the winning candidate.
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