COMMENTARY

He helped his members, gave taxpayers the bill

By YAEL T. ABOUHALKAH

The Kansas City Star

More News

For more than 20 years Louie Wright was the firefighters’ ally and the taxpayers’ antagonist.

A big part of the recently retired fire union president’s legacy is a bloated Fire Department that costs Kansas Citians at least $10 million more every year than it reasonably should. That’s $10 million going to more than 100 unneeded firefighters. It’s $10 million that could be used on smoother streets, bridge repairs, better park maintenance and new technology to catch tax cheats.

Over many years of dealing with Wright, I saw him:

• Outfox Mayor Emanuel Cleaver and other City Council members in 1996, getting them to approve an extra 5 percent “performance-based” pay raise for public safety officials. The standards weren’t tough to attain: 90 percent of eligible firefighters eventually received the hefty pay increases, which were canceled a year later.

• Brandish the fire union’s political clout to make sure Mayor Kay Barnes and the council placed on the 2001 ballot an unnecessary sales tax increase. That’s the tax now used to pay for the extra firefighters who have become a burden on taxpayers, all to meet the department’s exaggerated public safety staffing needs.

• Cajole Mayor Mark Funkhouser and the council in 2009 into backing a questionable Fire Department takeover of ambulance service.

• Alternately sweet-talk and bully Mayor Sly James and the current council in 2011 into approving an undeserved, multimillion-dollar, city-financed pension plan for former ambulance employees.

Unfortunately, the people who had the power to stand up to Wright and on the side of more responsible spending were the elected officials who most often kowtowed to him.

Wright’s success in peddling his power also was aided by his ability to make life easier for those he wanted to co-opt.

So it’s not surprising that Fire Chief Smokey Dyer praises the labor peace that Wright brokered over more than 20 years as union president — except for a brief threat of an illegal job action in 1998.

Of course, when firefighters are able to get lucrative pay raises plus excellent pension benefits — and pad the staff to make their jobs easier — Kansas Citians shouldn’t have to worry about the kinds of walkouts that occurred in 1975 and 1980.

Wright’s boosters properly talk about all the hard work he did to improve his negotiating skills, especially by attaining a master’s degree in public administration and a law degree. He certainly wasn’t a rough-talking union boss.

Instead, Wright tried to run rhetorical circles around those who challenged him. I enjoyed listening to Wright to find out what kind of deal he was trying to broker.

In 1999 Wright and the Fire Department made a big push to take over the city’s ambulance service. I questioned the move in print, prompting some go-rounds with Wright. City officials at that time properly nixed such a move. But Wright kept coming back to City Hall officials, who finally succumbed on the ambulance issue a decade later.

Early last year Wright served as a member of the Pension System Task Force, appointed to find ways to save the city’s financially unsustainable retirement systems for retirees, including firefighters. At a meeting in May, Wright smugly warned Mayor James not to believe the pension statistics printed two days earlier in The Star.

Unfortunately for Wright, the city staff had independently put together a chart about the pension plans, and all the facts in it matched up with The Star’s figures. It was a small but enjoyable victory over Wright’s bullying tactics.

Finally, I also vehemently opposed the 15-year sales tax increase in 2001, pointing out that much of the money would go for salaries, not quick construction of promised new fire stations. Voters endorsed the tax. Now, just over $10 million a year in sales tax revenue goes for personnel, with less than $4 million annually spent on capital improvements and debt.

That lug of a tax expires in 2016. Expect many horror stories from the Fire Department about what would happen if voters do not renew it.

Then again, what a perfect time that would be to pull the plug on at least one costly legacy of Louie Wright.