Cuts to Public Safety

The city of Cincinnati has a $60 million dollar deficit and the most likely targets for layoffs are the police and fire departments. The two departments represent two-thirds of the city's $334 million dollar budget. The FOP and firefighter's union are obviously prepared to fight any cuts. The proposals has brought only the best in some of the local residents who perceive city employees to be overpaid.

The city police and fire departments have suffered from bad press over the last decade ranging from the city riots in 2001 to a rash of firefighters involved in drug trafficking. The Cincinnati Enquirer makes sure to mention that a person is either a firefighter or police officer whenever they are accused of crime, even if the offense had nothing to do with their employment status. Relations between the departments and citizens has never been warm but lately have really begun to cool.

The city has for their part been extremely adept at promoting high dollar projects (such as the streetcar) or providing perks (such as private cars) to elected official. To be fair, the streetcar is being funded by federal dollars but it doesn't help residents feel any better about how city officials are doing their jobs.

The police and fire departments have locked in a large number of their personnel in the Deferred Retirement Program (DROP). To be eligible for DROP, individuals must be at least 48 with 25 years of service as a police officer or firefighter. When an officer joins DROP, he or she officially "retires" for pension purposes but retains the same job. While that caps their future pension, as long as they remain in DROP -- for at least three years and up to eight -- the monthly pension they otherwise would draw accumulates in an account, along with interest and a portion of their 10 percent of salary contributions.

There are around 200 police and 150 who will hit their maximum DROP time in 2012. The city manager is probably trying to target this group for cuts. The real news though is that neither the fire nor city fire departments have run academies in the last few year. There are no plans to have academies next year. This means no new personnel to fill the entry level ranks as current personnel fill the gaps created when those in DROP retire.

Ohio in general, and Cincinnati in particular, have large metropolitan areas in small counties. You would think this means what the city wants goes but instead it leads to grid lock between the city and county governments. The city of Cincinnati compounds matters by only recently adopting a system where the mayor is directly elected. Previously the city mayor was the city council member who had received the most votes. Everything was done based on consensus, no consensus and the city stalled. The county commissioners can and do ignore the city with great impunity.

What this all means is that the city is left to deal with its budget morass without interruption. I've written before about the trend in other states to move away from many smaller fire and police departments into regional public safety departments. Hamilton county has 40 separate fire and police departments. In theory, these could be combined into regional public safety departments to save money and improve response times. Local politics would prevent this from being a simple process but with the economy unlikely to improve, other options are even less appealing. Reducing the number of firehouses means longer response times. Increasing run times by even a few minutes can mean the difference between saving a house or not. Decreasing the number of police officers means increasing the response time to a call for help. Fewer police and firefighters means more stress for those left as they have to do more work.

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