Is it wrong to delay raises to Overland Park first responders amid COVID-19 outbreak?

With taxpayers being thrown out of work or facing the threat of it, is now the time for local governments to be spending more money they don’t have to?

Of course not. To its credit, Johnson County, facing an expected revenue shortfall of up to $38 million, announced it is cutting $19 million or more from its budget, nearly half of which will be from hiring freezes and employee furloughs.

It’s a prudent, responsible approach to budgeting that most in the private sector are well familiar with.

In stark contrast, however, several Overland Park City Council members are proposing the city actually spend more money now, by reviving previously delayed raises for first responders.

At a council meeting April 6, members Faris Farassati and Scott Hamblin moved to reinstate raises for first responders after city manager Bill Ebel suspended all city employee raises for 60 days. Their council colleagues voted that motion down, deciding on a 9-3 vote not to add Farassati’s motion to the agenda.

The next day, Farassati, Hamblin and council member Gina Burke proposed that first responders receive hazard pay of $500 a month for the duration of the Kansas disaster declaration, retroactive to March 15. That proposal may be considered at the council’s next meeting April 20, as well as a resolution asking the federal government to provide funds for local first-responder hazard pay.

First off, the city legal staff has advised council members that they have no authority to countermand Ebel’s 60-day pay freeze. Secondly, it’s no more than a pause in raises while the city manager calculates the damage that the coronavirus shutdown is doing to sales, guest and gasoline tax revenues. The city already projects a $25 million budget hole it will need to fill.

“All it is is a delay, so we can get a handle on exactly what’s going on,” Councilman Fred Spears said.

“I’m willing to give him the 60 days to do that,” added Councilman Chris Newlin.

“He’s not saying they’re not going to get a raise,” Councilman Paul Lyons said. “What he’s saying is, ‘Hey, I need two months to get my arms around what’s going on with the budget before we can proceed with this.’”

In addition, the scheduled first responder raises are generally higher than other city employees’: roughly 7% to 8.65%, compared to other city raises of up to 3%.

It’s fair to say the city appreciates its first responders.

So why is this such a controversy? It’s because some council members are thinking politically rather than strategically, according to their colleagues.

“I think it’s just self-serving political theater, to be honest with you,” Spears told The Star.

Lyons agreed, saying it was “completely political.”

“I do think on social media, they are trying to make me look bad,” Newlin said.

That charge seems to be objectively true. In a Facebook post April 8, Hamblin wrote of the council majority, “It’s becoming even more unfortunate our ‘leaders’ refuse, and even voted down, the motion to just simply discuss the options we have to support our first responders. This act of patting them on the back and then (telling) the public ‘they understand’ is exhausting and offensive to keep hearing from those who refuse to lead.”

That’s unfair. The nine council members simply agreed to let stand a two-month delay in citywide raises until the extent of the COVID-19 plummet in March tax revenues becomes clear in May. The move is all the more reasonable set against the furloughs and layoffs going on all around the city council — in Johnson County government and among the taxpayers who happen to pay the government’s freight.

Likewise, Farassati took to Facebook this week to impugn his colleagues, particularly Lyons, whose initial skepticism of hazard pay Farassati called “highly irresponsible, but also illogical, uneducated, and insulting.”

“That is not the way that you govern,” Lyons tells The Star. “You don’t govern through the media. He has to persuade six other council members that his point of view is correct.”

Farassati told The Star he thinks it’s important not to stress out first responders with their finances as they respond bravely to the pandemic. Agreed. But no one is taking their pay or jobs, as is happening to other workers right now. Their raises are just being delayed.

“But you have to realize, we are the government. We are not the private sector,” Farassati said. Not a very strong argument against fiscal prudence.

No one has said no to the idea of hazard pay. The proposal was made April 7, the day after the council meeting and outside the normal processes of committee and council deliberation.

Farassati is attacking a colleague over an item, hazard pay, that the council hasn’t even had a chance to put on the agenda, much less discuss or actually vote on.

This isn’t city planning, it’s political scheming. It’s not welcome anytime, and certainly not in the middle of a health and economic crisis.

Don’t buy it. You don’t have the money to right now, anyway.

This story was originally published April 13, 2020 at 5:00 AM.