Bill hardly an attack on middle class

Nevada lawmakers don’t have to look too hard for reasons to pass Assembly Bill 182, which contains provisions that public employee bargaining groups have labeled “union Armageddon.” In fact, lawmakers can find the biggest justification for the bill walking the halls of the Legislative Building as a paid lobbyist.

Leonard Cardinale, president of the North Las Vegas Police Supervisors Association, is the poster boy for labor reform. He and his union abuse every bit of leverage allowed under the state’s collective bargaining law to enrich themselves and deny their city government the flexibility it needs to regain financial stability.

Far from abolishing public-sector collective bargaining, AB182, sponsored by Assemblyman Randy Kirner, R-Reno, would amend existing law to end some of the preferential treatment private unions enjoy at taxpayer expense and restore some balance to both the taxpayer-government and management-union relationships.

Among other things, AB182 would prohibit collective bargaining for supervisors; prevent governments from paying public employees engaged in union activities; end government collection of union dues through employee payroll deductions; allow layoffs not based on employee seniority; and halt the practice of allowing contracted compensation increases to continue after a collective bargaining agreement expires, which gives unions an incentive to drag out negotiations for new deals. The bill had its initial hearing Wednesday before rooms packed with public employees decrying a Republican attack on middle-class families.

But public-sector supervisors are not part of the struggling middle class. If anything, North Las Vegas police supervisors live among the “1-percenters” that unions frequently attack. North Las Vegas has 45 police supervisors, according to a city spokesman, 33 of whom are dues-paying members of their union. According to TransparentNevada.com, only two of those supervisors received less than $200,000 in total compensation last year.

Cardinale wasn’t one of them. He received more than $225,000 in total compensation — much of it for doing union work on taxpayer time. But he had a problem with that arrangement. Under the group’s contract, the Police Supervisors Association was allowed to bill the public for up to 1,200 hours of union activity each year, or about 30 weeks of full-time work for one person. Cardinale thought he should be able to work full-time for the union at public expense.

In Cardinale’s deposition in connection with a lawsuit he filed against the city, which I obtained through a public records request, he said city officials had “agreed that because of our size that they had little issue with us having a full-time position.” For a union with just 33 dues-paying members.

The city’s firefighter union has about 150 members and doesn’t have a full-time executive.

How in the world could a full-time union president with just a few dozen charges bill all those hours? By turning members’ names into anagrams?

No. By filing claims against the city to extract more money, of course. In February, the city entered a settlement with the Police Supervisors Association to resolve 16 cases, complaints and grievances, including several involving Cardinale’s limited hours doing actual police work.

Sixteen disputes for 33 members.

Even though police supervisors comprise a tiny slice of the North Las Vegas workforce, and even though they’re, you know, supervisors who should know how to do their jobs, their union gives them disproportionate influence over city budgeting and administrative decisions.

Supervisors are bosses. They tell regular employees what to do. They exercise judgment. They hold people accountable. That’s why supervisors generally are excluded from private-sector bargaining. But when public-sector supervisors can unionize and gain their own iron-clad job protections, it’s impossible to hold them accountable.

If lawmakers pass AB182, the North Las Vegas Police Supervisors Association goes bye-bye. And Cardinale will have to do a lot more policing. Which North Las Vegas needs.

Ending supervisor unionization and taxpayer-funded union work isn’t an attack on the middle class. It’s a favor.

Glenn Cook (gcook@reviewjournal.com) is the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s senior editorial writer. Follow him on Twitter: @Glenn_CookNV.