Could Naperville council reject police contract?

Naperville's controversial agreement for a three-year police contract may not be set in stone.

At least two councilmen Richard Furstenau and Doug Krause said Friday they want to force their colleagues to vote on the pact in public for the first time with an eye toward possibly rejecting the very contract the city council authorized its negotiating team to approve.

That pact, announced Thursday after 18 months of negotiations, provides police officers with raises totaling more than 9 percent for the next three years.

But even as the agreement was being unveiled, some officials made it clear the city can't afford the salary increases and indicated they likely will lead to layoffs in the police department.

Furstenau and Krause both said they are unhappy with the contents of the contract and the way in which it was approved. They said they will participate in a push to direct City Manager Doug Krieger to bring the contract back before the full council at its next meeting.

Both men say the council avoided taking a public vote by reaching an agreement before entering binding arbitration and having the arbitrator approve it as a “consent award.” As a result, neither the police union nor the council had to take a ratification vote.

“I'm sorry, but that's not being transparent in government,” Krause said. “It was handled in a way in which nobody had to raise their hands in public.”

Instead, the council voted 6-3 behind closed doors to authorize its negotiating team to approve the deal. The “no” votes came from Furstenau, Krause and Grant Wehrli.

Wehrli could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.

John Brosnan, executive director of the Illinois Labor Relations Board, said the city council has 20 days to review each item in the agreement and can reject any or all of them by a three-fifths vote.

The city then would be required to provide written reasons to both the police union and arbitrator for its decision.

Once the paperwork was complete, the arbitrator would have 30 days to call both sides back together. The city, however, would be responsible for paying all “reasonable costs” for the union's legal representation.

Any subsequent agreements still would be subject to city council approval.

Tamara Cummings, general counsel for Fraternal Order of Police Local 42, said she would be stunned if the council voted to reject its own offer.

In most arbitration cases, she said, the council would vote after the arbitrator made his ruling. In this case, she said, the council voted in advance to approve the very proposal the arbitrator signed off on.

Cummings said the city pursued the “consent award” because it provided the council with “political cover” that allows it to attribute the contract agreement to a third party.

Krause and Furstenau agree.

Krause said he was in a minority of council members who wanted the city to take the contract dispute through the entire arbitration process.

Some officials said they feared such an approach because the arbitrator could choose either the city's offer or the police union's offer, with no room for compromise.

But Krause said it would have taken the arbitrator until February 2011 to return with a decision, giving both sides longer to work out an agreement on their own.

“I was willing to go to arbitration and then see what the final offers are,” he said. “It would give us time to see whether we could work something (a compromise) out.”

Brosnan said the possibility of tossing out the apparent agreement “might not be as unusual as it would seem.”

“Sometimes in bargaining people change their minds,” he said. “Sometimes they didn't fully understand what they were agreeing to or gave more thought to it.”