Soap, Toilet Paper and Sacrifice

Time for Montgomery's unions to look inward for savings

ONE OF THE MAIN unions representing public employees in Montgomery County has produced a fascinating document whose stated aim is to help the county government, currently struggling with plummeting revenue and the prospect of soaring taxes, achieve greater efficiency and cost savings. The document has achieved a measure of notoriety for its curious suggestion that inmates at the county jail receive limited weekly rations of toilet paper and soap, a dubious proposal on both sanitary and humanitarian grounds. Unfortunately, what goes unmentioned in the document is the elephant in the room: the union's own sweetheart deal and its cost to county residents.

The paper produced by the Municipal and County Government Employees Organization (MCGEO), which represents some 4,700 public workers in Montgomery, is chock-full of ideas for firing managers, eliminating supervisory positions, and slashing programs and resources, including substance addiction facilities and halfway houses, aimed at helping the county's most disadvantaged and troubled citizens. The union's detailed recommendations even extend to reducing county spending on batteries, though how that might be accomplished is not specified. (Perhaps by disabling wall clocks at the conclusion of each workday?) Some of these ideas may be worth pursuing. What seems certain is that they are unlikely to achieve even a fraction of the savings that the union itself could deliver by sacrificing just a portion of its members' outsized annual pay increases.

Most workers represented by MCGEO, and by other public employees' unions in the county, are set to receive pay raises on the order of 8 percent a year, including step and cost-of-living increments -- an increase that is practically unheard of these days in the private sector. Next year, the county will spend $17.5 million just to fulfill MCGEO's contractual increases. If the union, joined by those representing teachers, firefighters and other public employees, would agree to raises of 6 percent rather than 8 percent, that would save the county well over $40 million in the coming year.

A savings of that magnitude, coupled with a measure of uncharacteristic spending restraint on the part of the county government and schools, would soften the blow of what otherwise will be sharp property tax increases for the county's 900,000 residents. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether either the County Council or the Board of Education has the appetite for demanding such concessions from the unions, whose electoral and political clout is considerable. It is all well and good for the unions to express their interest in organizational efficiency and strict rationing of soap and toilet paper. But unless they start looking inward for savings, not just outward, the county is headed for budget-busting times.