Retirement Board, city unions prioritize members over taxpayers

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It was one of the most enlightening moments of my journalistic career. It was the winter of 2009 and New Bedford was in the midst of a severe budget crisis. A year into the Great Recession of 2008, then Mayor Scott Lang was frantically trying to prevent massive layoffs of city workers, including police officers and firefighters.

A former longtime union lawyer, Lang made a proposal to the city’s public safety officers. Allow the city to temporarily reduce their pay by 10% and New Bedford could prevent the layoff of roughly 200 workers, including 35 police officers and 35 firefighters.

It was a tough time. The failure of the federal government to properly regulate mortgages, and the subsequent collapse of the housing market, had caused many to lose both their homes and their jobs.

The state of Massachusetts, in its own dire financial straits, had reduced the amount of local aid to cities and towns by millions. And as we’ve recently heard, that money has never come back to the municipalities in terms of inflation-adjusted dollars.

I’ll never forget the impassioned pleas Mayor Lang made to the unions. “New Bedford’s employees should not become a class of itinerant workers, being laid off and recalled as dollars permit,” he said. “Careers aren’t built working one day and waiting for an unemployment check the next.”

The unions were unmoved.

The heads of the New Bedford police, fire, teachers unions — none of them returned my calls at the time. The one union leader who did answer represented the clerical workers and laborers, and when he called, he determinedly evaded answering my question as to whether senior AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employee) workers would take a pay cut in order to save the junior members’ jobs. It turned out they would not.

So out the door went the police, firefighters and lots of other city workers, and as Lang predicted, many of those positions have never come back.

But it got worse. After Mayor Lang furloughed the clerical workers and laborers, their union sued the city, arguing the mayor had no right to cut back their hours, which he’d done on Friday afternoons. 

It took eight years but eventually the unions won. The courts upheld a state Labor Relations Commission ruling that Lang did not have the right to furlough the workers for four hours a week, and New Bedford taxpayers had to pay those unionized workers $1.8 million in back pay for hours they never worked.

It was ironic. Some of the same union members that Lang could have legally laid off but instead saved their jobs by slightly reducing their pay, those same folks turned around and sued him. “Rocking-chair money,” Lang called the wages that the city workers demanded for not working.

The memory of that time, however, that is really seared into my mind was a conversation I had with a young police officer outside the downtown New Bedford Franciscan chapel. I can’t remember what the officer was doing one chilly winter morning, but I do remember that he was being helpful and courteous. I thought he was an exemplary young officer.

I went up to him and explained who I was, and asked him how he was going to vote on the mayor’s request, given that an officer his age would surely be laid off if the union nixed the mayor’s proposal.

The officer did not hesitate for a minute. He said he was voting against the reduction in pay and for the layoffs. The reason, he said, is that one day he would be an older officer and he would want to get the greater amount of money that the senior officers earn.

That policeman I talked to on the street was not unusual. The firefighters, the teachers, the AFSCME workers all took the same position. Go ahead, Mayor Lang, lay off our youngest colleagues (per union contract, it’s always the least senior employees who get the ax first.) Lay off the kids, they all but shouted. Just don’t touch our money!

That’s right, the union members who serve the taxpayers of New Bedford cared not a whit for their own younger colleagues, who let’s be fair, often do much of the hard work in any police, fire department, school department or City Hall. Worse, in my opinion, the city unions cared not a whit for the citizens of New Bedford who would have to go without the laid-off police officers, firefighters, public works workers, clerks, teachers and librarians and other union members who work for the City of New Bedford.

Now, I’ve told this story about the last big budget crisis that New Bedford faced 15 years ago so that I could talk about what municipal union leaders did a few weeks ago in light of the city’s current budget crisis.

On May 28, the New Bedford Retirement Board voted 3-2 to give its members the maximum 3% cost-of-living (COLA) allowance. The vote took place just a week after Mayor Jon Mitchell had announced the city would have to close a fire station and eliminate 94 city jobs (including laying off 36 workers and leaving 58 positions vacant).

The mayor said that in order to address a $32 million deficit, he was also recommending that property taxes increase more than normal, management employees not receive their annual cost-of-living raise, the libraries reduce hours and the police ShotSpotter program be eliminated.

Many of the laid off workers would be firefighters, and the city would also have to put off plans to study the construction of a long-awaited, and badly needed, new police station.

Just like the union leaders 15 years ago, today’s union members were unmoved. The firefighters turned out in droves to the City Council to protest the mayor’s address outlining his budget cuts. They also got their message over loud and clear to their colleagues on the New Bedford Retirement Board.

The two union members on the five-member Retirement Board, retired police officer Leonard Baillargeon and retired firefighter Billy Cabral, unapologetically voted to give the retirees the COLA raise, the same raise the city’s management personnel won’t be getting this year. The city’s representatives to the board — City Auditor Quillan Lowney and retired Personnel Director Angela Natho — voted against the pay increase. The so-called Fifth Member of the board, the member of the board who is supposed to be the neutral party who breaks ties, voted with the unions, as he has done in the past.

That member would be County Treasurer Chris Saunders, whose family has long been associated with a city political operation known as “The Machine.” The Machine — what can I say about it that I haven’t said so many times over the years? How should I describe it for someone new to the city? 

The Machine exists for itself, its members and its friends. That’s who The Machine was, is, and probably always will be.

Two years ago, the union members on the Retirement Board railroaded through Saunders’ appointment over what I would argue were equally qualified but more neutral applicants. There’s no doubt the union members of the board knew who they could depend on and who they couldn’t.

One thing about New Bedford municipal unions is that they have been remarkably consistent over the years. They always unabashedly vote for the interests of their members over the interests of the city’s taxpayers. Whether it’s their refusal to modify one of the most expensive health insurance plans in the state or its determination to always approve cost-of-living increases even when they are greater than inflation, the unions are consistent. That’s their legal right, of course, but is it the right thing to do?

By the way, the city could have saved the North End fire station, Mayor Mitchell said, if the firefighters union had been willing to reduce its crews from four to three, as is the case in every other municipality in Massachusetts except two others. The firefighters union, in the best tradition of New Bedford public safety unions, would not hear of it.

No doubt, it’s a tough call for firefighters — choosing between the safest number of crew numbers for themselves or leaving a whole section of the North End without a nearby fire station. But it would be nice to hear them at least consider reducing the crews to the level of the overwhelming majority of other Massachusetts cities. New Bedford, after all, is certainly not one of the wealthiest communities in the state even though its unions always unequivocally demand that they get the very best in terms of benefits.

In my opinion, what’s going on right now in New Bedford is an all-out war between the administration of Mayor Jon Mitchell and the New Bedford Firefighters Association. And it’s not doing either side any good.

The mayor, in my opinion, believes the union’s demands are unreasonable and that they prioritize their own needs so greatly that they are unwilling to compromise with the taxpayers on them.

What comes from this kind of union attitude? Well, when it came to Mayor Mitchell facing a deficit, the uncompromising firefighters became the mayor’s prime target for cutting — even if he had to paint an exaggerated portrait of the size of the budget shortfall to do it.

The unions, however, dominate the Retirement Board and they fought back.

At the May 28 board meeting, Saunders, like longtime Sen. Mark Montigny before him, spent some time questioning how the city could have gone from having a budget surplus to a budget deficit in the four months between December 2025 and April 2026.

It appears that neither Saunders nor Montigny understands the difference between money on hand in Fiscal Year 2025 and that which is available in Fiscal Year 2027. That’s the kind-hearted explanation for their statements about the deficit. 

At the same Retirement Board meeting, City Auditor Bob Ekstrom before the COLA vote, explained to the members the reasons that the city could not afford a 3% increase this year. He outlined how much of the Fiscal 2025 surplus money was due to a one-time move in the cable television account to please the bond rating agencies. The other big reason was that the temporary infusions of federal post-pandemic money of recent years had come to an end in Fiscal Year 2026.

It’s understandable why officials might have been confused. The same Auditor Ekstrom last December was justifiably touting Fiscal Year 2025 surpluses achieved through restraints on city spending. But if Ekstrom was going to brag so much about the city’s good accounting job two years ago, he might have also warned that a revenue crisis was just ahead on the horizon. He didn’t.

Still, Ekstrom didn’t create this budget crisis. Not at all. If anyone created it, it’s the state Legislature, a series of governors, and President Donald Trump and the U.S. Congress.

The undeniable reality is that the Fiscal 2025 money is gone now and the city is in the midst of planning for Fiscal 2027 that begins July 1. That’s where the deficit is located.

The reason for the revenue shortfall in cities and towns across Massachusetts this year is that the country, state and region have entered a time of inflation due to decisions made at the federal level. We all know what they are. The pandemic inflation, the tariffs, the Iran War and on and on.

In addition, the City Council continues to be led around by the municipal unions. Be they philosophically conservative or progressive, virtually all city councilors refuse to take the steps necessary to rein in the rapidly escalating costs of city employee health care and pensions. Add in a big dollop of responsibility to the state Legislature for failing to reform the structural issues connected to government pensions in Massachusetts, and you’ll understand how the city went from surplus to deficit so seemingly quickly. 

New Bedford is by no means the only local municipality in this situation this year. Nearby Fairhaven and Lakeville both had to consider Proposition 2 1⁄2 overrides and Dartmouth says it may be a year away from a deficit.

It’s the pensions, of course, that are of concern to the New Bedford Retirement Board.

Yes, the mayor has made it worse as a means to cut the benefits the Firefighters Association would not bargain over. That’s political hardball and when unions are intractable with a mayor as determined as Mitchell that’s what they get. 

The reality is that government pensions in Massachusetts continue to grow faster than taxpayers can reasonably be expected to keep up with them. As the mayor has pointed out, New Bedford now pays more to retirees every year than it does to the police and firefighters who are currently working here. And as the city tries to meet a mandate to fully fund the system by 2035, it’s getting worse each year.

Saunders and Retirement Board Executive Secretary Eric Cohen always stress that the New Bedford system’s investments continue to make more money than their state counterparts in the PRIT (Pension Reserves Investment Management Board). And that’s laudable, but the retirement system still needs the city’s annual contributions. And if the city goes belly up and a state receiver takes over, the unions will have little to no say in how much money goes to the Retirement Board or anywhere else. New Bedford cannot just earn its way out of its funding problem in the stock market.

Saunders, from his remarks on the May 28 meeting, appeared not to really care about any of this. 

In fact, he as much as said the Retirement Board has no role in protecting city taxpayers or the solvency of the city government prior to the vote raising the COLAs.

“We have a fiduciary responsibility to this system, not to the city of New Bedford,” he said. “The mission of this board is to look out for the members, the retirees.”

Saunders was referring to the fact that the New Bedford Retirement System is not part of city government. It’s a system of retirees, the overwhelming majority of whom are from the city government, but also includes the regional voc-tech school, the housing authority, the public transit system and the Dartmouth-New Bedford landfill.

The Retirement System, however, will certainly be connected to New Bedford city government if the latter goes bankrupt. In that case, Saunders certainly does have a fiduciary responsibility to make sure the City of New Bedford does not go belly up even if he disagrees with how it is being administered.

Saunders himself, when he was interviewed to be on the Retirement Board, said, “You can’t spend what you don’t have.” He didn’t really elaborate at the time on exactly what he meant by that vague statement but the administration, whether Saunders believes them or not, is yelling and screaming that it doesn’t have the money for the COLA this year. Everyone else connected to city government is sacrificing, so why shouldn’t the retirees?

Saunders and Baillargeon and Cabral all talked about mismanagement of the city budget, but Wall Street, which increased the bond rating under the Mitchell administration two years ago, seems to disagree. It praised the management of city finances.

I like Chris Saunders. I believe he is a serious man but I also believe he is being blinded by his philosophical and/or political disagreements with the mayor. This has all the smell of payback for something. Perhaps the hard time the mayor is giving the unions? Perhaps the hard time the mayor gave Saunders when he filed an open meeting law violation against the Retirement Board over the latter’s appointment?

The bad blood between the Mitchell administration and the city unions has certainly been building for many years. Billy Cabral, the state firefighters’ association official who was recently elected by union members to the board, talked about the Retirement Board being sick of the fact that the mayor is always blaming the pensions for being a big part of the city’s budgetary problems.

Cabral told Ekstrom that the auditor’s statement that he was coming before the board with an olive branch is hard to believe because of the administration’s longtime complaints about the pension costs. 

“You have to have relationships in order to work with people,” he said.

“There’s got to be trust, there has to be a semblance of trust,” Cabral said. “You can’t go out and say ‘You’re the problem.’ And then go ‘I need your help.’”

It’s certainly true that Mitchell over his 14 years in office has not been either the best communicator or consensus builder. In his defense, however, he complains about pension and health care costs because they really are one of the biggest items driving New Bedford budget increases. 

Mitchell is a conservative Democrat and though I think he believes in paying fair wages and benefits to workers, he’s also the kind of Democrat who cares about taxpayers. And like anyone else who lives in New Bedford, Mitchell knows that many city property taxpayers and renters are just as much working people as the people who are lucky enough to have a city pension. 

The Mitchell administration has estimated that the 3% COLAs granted by the Retirement Board will cost the city about $1 million a year. That’s a small part of a $32 million deficit but every bit helps in a year like this.

The real problem is the decline in local aid since the Great Recession. 

The state of Massachusetts giveth and the state of Massachusetts taketh.

Maybe Mark Montigny and Tony Cabral can persuade Senate and House leadership to reform the local aid and pension situations.

The city government and the city unions are just left to fight over the spoils.

Jack Spillane is a New Bedford Light news and opinion columnist. You can reach Jack at jspillane@newbedfordlight.org.

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