County lawyer exposes fire union’s spin in arbitration

By Jon Ralston

Friday, Jan. 28, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

If ever there were a compelling argument to televise collective bargaining sessions between governments and public employee unions, Clark County’s extraordinary hearing with its firefighters and an arbitrator makes any “Law & Order” episode look tepid.

County attorney Mark Ricciardi’s shredding of fire union chief Ryan Beaman, exposing a series of convenient memory losses, obvious dissimulations and outright contradictions, would make Jack McCoy proud. Reading through the astonishing transcript, which resulted in that stunning defeat for Local 1908 before Arbitrator Norman Brand, leads to the inescapable conclusion that the fire union misled the public and unfairly maligned county officials.

The stories of horrendous sick leave abuse, which were generally isolated, have made headlines, as the union’s mewling that the county’s poor oversight led to the ability of some firefighters to make more than $200,000 a year. But that is a lesser story compared with what really happened here, as exposed by Ricciardi’s brilliant lawyering that left Beaman forced into admission after admission.

The sessions last November began with union attorney W. David Holsberry insisting “the union gets it … it understands the financial realities the county faces,” yet lamenting that “the county still wants to change many of these long-standing benefits in a one-year deal … Local 1908 believes that the evidence will show that it has always in this process acted responsibly and fairly … not treated by the county as a partner in these negotiations.”

The arbitrator, in his decision, would make the point that the union never really appreciated the county’s fiscal quicksand and the transcript shows the union acted in anything but a responsible and fair manner. But Brand’s decision, posted on my blog on the Sun’s site, did not capture exactly how horrendously Beaman was exposed by Ricciardi, with the county’s lawyer acting like a psychiatrist treating a selective amnesiac. To wit:

• Remember that $4 million the union “set aside” as a giveback for the operating budget, as Beaman puts it, that had been designated for a security fence? Generous, eh? Not quite.

I can’t quite capture the colloquy in the space I have, but suffice to say, Beaman pretended not to realize the $4 million was encumbered by a voter-approved tax override, with Ricciardi pressing him again and again to acknowledge that, until:

Ricciardi: “Does the $4 million — can that be put into the operating budget? The answer is no. Isn’t that correct?

Beaman: “That money specifically, I would say no.”

Later, Ricciardi exhumed testimony by Beaman in the 2009 Legislature in which the union boss said he offered it as a concession and “the only condition to the offer was that the money go directly to University Medical Center to open the outpatient oncology center.” Again, how generous, especially with money he could not offer.

But then it got even worse. Ricciardi then pointed out that on KNPR’s “State of Nevada,” Beaman said the fence money was “something we bargained for for security for our members, $4 million with no questions asked, nothing in return. We said here is $4 million back to the county. They didn’t want the $4 million.”

Disingenuous doesn’t even begin to describe this.

Ricciardi also showed that while the union made a public show of accusing county management of “making excuses” why the government would not release the $4 million, it was never a possibility and the union folks refused to acknowledge that. Why? Because they didn’t want to put salaries and benefits on the table — until they were forced to.

• Ricciardi showed that Beaman had made a proposal, which he seemed to have forgotten, that would have added — yes, added — five vacation days for the members and extended the deal to June 2012, with re-openers to increase COLAS, too.

It takes several pages of the transcript just for Ricciardi to get Beaman to acknowledge that a document he has is his. It is amazing to read:

Beaman: “It looks familiar.”

Ricciardi: “Well, come on now.”

Beaman: “It looks familiar. I can’t tell you it’s mine because I don’t — it’s not — it doesn’t say put together by Ryan Beaman, but I would assume it’s mine.”

Seriously?

Then Ricciardi does the math, showing that adding the extra five days would have cost the county as much as $2 million while Beaman continued to hem and haw about whether the offer he made was actually an offer he made.

Ricciardi exposed all of what the fire union and its PR folks have said publicly during these negotiations as either distorted or false. It is entertaining and excruciating to read — and it’s all on the public record now.

There is so much more in the 700 pages. But you get the picture. And next time, the negotiation should be televised.

(An excerpt of the arbitration transcript can be found here).