For too long now we have been held hostage by the arbitrary decisions of Jerry Abramson. He has ruled the community with a smile on his face while he patted everyone on the back looking for a soft spot to sink his knife. He has been told he was wrong time and time again and has never been held accountable for his actions. He has bankrupted this community and then had the gall after cutting every branch of government service to try and make the employees refill the empty coffers by mandating furlough days and cancelling the big old 2% raise he gave everyone, but the kicker for us was that he violated our contract and began charging us for the use of the take home cars.
He has been brought up short every single time he has violated labor contracts yet he continued to do so and then fight them in court costing the taxpayers even more money. The Kentucky Labor Cabinet ruled in June of last year that he was wrong and ordered him to "cease and desist" charging a fee to Officers for the take home cars. For a year now we have waited patiently for the appeals to run out and the court battle to come to a close.
The case went to Circuit Court and to Judge Mitch Perry for judgment on May 7th of this year and he has finally ruled in favor of the Police and reaffirmed the orders of the Kentucky Labor Cabinet in all respects. This means that the judge agreed with the cabinet's decision that Metro Government violated its obligation to bargain in good faith by unilaterally deciding to make changes (take home car fees) to our wages, hours and/or working conditions without negotiating such changes.
What disturbed me though was that while he agreed that in all respects that Abramson had no right to do this, that it wasn't his place to order them to pay us back the money that was illegally taken from us that we should negotiate with Metro Government over it.
I could not believe it. It is like someone broke into your house, stole your valuables and was found guilty in court but it is up to you to negotiate with him to get you stuff back. This is ridiculous! The total for each individual Officer will depend on whether he chose to stay in the take home car program and if he did whether or not he chose to pay the illegal fee while it was being litigated.
I chose to stay in and was confident that this was a battle we would win eventually. We won every step of the way and now to have the Judge rule that Abramson was wrong, so says the Kentucky Labor Cabinet and so says the Courts, but sorry fellows that money he stole from you, your bargaining agent the FOP is going to have to negotiate the return of your money with the same people that took it from you in the first place. For me it was three months of fees at $30.00 ($90.00) + six months of fees at $60.00 ($360.00) and six months of fees at $160.00) ($960.00) for a total of $1,410.00 that he stole from me by charging fees found to be illegal not only by the Kentucky Labor Cabinet but by the courts as well.
Metro Government Attorneys stated in Judge Perry's court over a year ago that this wasn't "irreparable harm", because all they had to do was repay the money if the courts ruled that their taking it was improper. So, why do we have to negotiate to get our own money back?