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Judge’s funding order on agenda
Published 9:49am Wednesday, August 22, 2012When Ironton City Council meets at 6 p.m. Thursday, it will discuss a court order from Ironton Municipal Court Judge O. Clark Collins directing the city to move money needed to pay 7 1/2 percent of the retirement pickup for his employees from his court probation fund.
Earlier this year, city council approved a plan that requires non-union employees to begin paying 7 1/2 percent of the 10 percent local contribution to each person’s retirement.
This includes municipal court workers. The fire department, which is one of the city’s three unions, agreed to pay 3 percent of the local amount; the police and public works unions chose instead to lay off employees to reach their 7 1/2 percent cut.
Also on the agenda is the first reading of an ordinance to hire E.L. Robinson Engineering to provide services for the Nixon Hill hillside slip repair. The contract is for $53,700.
The council meeting follows a 5 p.m. council finance committee meeting. Both meeting are in council chambers on the third floor of the Ironton City Center.
And to think, during the SB5 battle, people all over Ohio and here in Ironton scoffed at the notion that there were any public employees who did not pay for some of their pensions and healthcare.
Council can discuss all they want. The court order will stand.
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The city’s finances shouldn’t be a shell game. If council allows this order to stand they’ll simply be hiding the peanut underneath a different shell and accomplishing nothing.
If the judge has too much money in his probation account then council should cut that fund; then collect from the court’s employees their fair share of their retirement fund … just like workers in the real world.
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