My name is Frank Ricci and I serve as the Labor Fellow at Yankee Institute — the eyes, ears and voice of hardworking people who want a prosperous Connecticut. Our common sense solutions drive positive legislative results to strengthen our communities and build a vibrant, hopeful future.
I retired as a Battalion Chief after a 28-year career as a firefighter. In that span, I spent 22 years serving in the City of New Haven and 16 years as a union official with service as an executive board member, vice president and retired after two years as president.
During my career, I’ve seen first-hand the lengths to which first responders have taken to help those in dire situations. Some have made the ultimate sacrifice.
Proponents of H.B. 6953 argue that requiring our cities and towns to provide a municipal employees’ retirement system or another system that offers comparable or superior benefits will bring dignity to firefighters and police officers — but that is far from the truth.
This bill is not about dignity and respect: it is about passing another unfunded mandate on to the taxpayers without regard for property taxes or the current law.
As a former union official, I witnessed how municipalities and unions negotiate while being conscious of local budgetary issues and the community’s needs. This allows negotiators to balance the interests of workers and the taxpayers. Indeed, decisions are best made by the unit of government closest to the people whose lives are affected by the laws that are put in place.
H.B. 6953, however, flies in the face of good local governance and the collective bargaining process.
Connecticut has some of the most robust collective bargaining laws in the nation that our first responders fall under. In fact, this legislative body passed the Municipal Employee Relations Act (MERA) — providing a mechanism complete with binding arbitration where unions and management can adjudicate any impasse.
Collective bargaining should be left between the municipalities and unions — without being influenced by the state government; especially when both parties have already been addressing possible pensions. For instance, in 2019, after years of not providing pensions, Branford reintroduced the benefit in order to attract quality candidates to apply for police and firefighter positions. Meanwhile, the City of West Haven currently is increasing pay and restoring pension benefits after seeing a mass exodus of qualified police officers.
If H.B. 6953 is passed, local municipalities would be handcuffed with blanket mandates from Hartford, who has not considered the unintended consequences on local budgets.
Moreover, this bill introduces a pernicious ‘buyer’s remorse’ phenomenon. All collective bargaining agreements have a finite number of years, at which the union has another opportunity to negotiate for its members. However, H.B. 6953 incentivizes union leaders to circumvent the bargaining table by, instead, lobbying the state legislature to put their thumb on the scale to the unions’ benefit.
Meanwhile, in some communities, the unions actually negotiated away their pension benefits and are now asking the state to operate as a union. This is not the proper role of state government.
While well intentioned, H.B. 6953 would be another unfunded mandate passed down to municipalities without regard for the taxpayers; and it will create unintended problems during negotiations that greatly favor one side of the bargaining table versus the other.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify before this distinguished committee.
