Summary of January 22nd Personnel Appeals Board Hearing

Thanks again to everyone who came to the hearing to show their support for our members. This hearing picked up where the last one left off with the Appellant's testimony. The second Appellant testified to his reasons for filing his appeal which were pretty much in line with the first Appellant who testified at the last hearing. He went over his experience and test preparation, but otherwise there wasn't anything new revealed.

The Appellants also called a Lieutenant from our Department as a witness. He testified that when he took a Sergeant's exam several years ago he too had questions about the reasoning behind the low passing score he received on his oral board exam. In that case he contacted HR Director Santiago Malave and asked to see his score sheets, which he was allowed to do without any questions or having to file any official requests. He also testified that he learned he could do this from another Sergeant who told him that she had been able to see her oral board results and suggested he do the same. This of course stands in stark contrast to the experience the three Appellants had in this case where they were lied to and then denied the ability to review their paperwork, even after filing the official paperwork as instructed by Mr. Malave.

Because we were limited in time at this hearing, that's all we were able to cover. There is another hearing on Monday the 27th at 1700 were the Appellants should be able to wrap up their initial case and the Town will begin theirs, but at this time we don't know if that hearing will be open to the pubic or not.

After the hearing the Appellants, the Union President and Vice President finally received copies of the documents that we've been seeking regarding this matter. We haven't had time to review everything in depth yet since there's a large number of pages, but we'll be working on getting that done and meeting amongst ourselves in the coming days. As we detailed in a previous post we are prohibited from disclosing the contents of the documents to anyone not involved in this process due to a court order. But we can say that after what we've seen so far in a brief overview of the documents, the Union absolutely intends to continue to pursue our grievance on this issue and our assistance to the Appellants for all the reasons we've previously stated here and at our meetings.

Personnel Appeals Board Hearing January 22nd

The next PAB Hearing is Scheduled for Wednesday January 22nd from 1700-1900. We have a fixed end time due to another group using the room after us. This hearing will still be open to the public as we will not be using the "confidential" documents at that hearing since we may not have them yet and/or will not have had time to fully review them, so members are still free to come to observe and show their support if you wish.

EHPOA Wins Limited Release of Sergeant's Oral Board Documents in Superior Court

As most of you are aware we have been fighting with the Town over viewing the documents related to the contested Sergeant's test for 7 or 8 months now in multiple venues. The Union has consistently argued that if we were allowed to see the documents and everything appeared legitimate as the Town claims it is, then this issue would go away and we could move forward with promotions. Instead the Town has fought us tooth and nail and spent tens, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep these supposedly benign documents hidden from anyone's view despite past practice of transparency. In the meantime the custodian of the documents suddenly put in for retirement which has further raised suspicion that maybe they're not so benign after all.

One of the venues we've been fighting in is Superior Court where we filed a motion to release the documents for use the Personnel Appeals Board hearings. Last week when the attorneys went before the judge there was no question on his part that the candidates should be allowed to see these documents and use them in their appeals. But he wanted to come up with some sort of protective order over the documents to satisfy the Town's desire to keep them shrouded in secrecy. Yesterday we received the judge's decision on the matter which is as follows;

The Union's attorney, President, Vice President, and the three appealing candidates will be allowed to view all documents related to the test unredacted.

The seven non-appealing candidates will be allowed to view all documents pertaining only to their own individual tests unredacted.

Witnesses and outside experts may view only the content of the documents pertinent to their testimony.

All parties allowed to view the documents will have to sign a confidentiality agreement to not disclose the information contained in the documents to anyone not listed in the above paragraphs. They must also agree to only use this information for the PAB hearings and may not use them for any other hearing without going through this court process again. Additionally once the hearings are over we must return the documents to the Town for destruction, never to be seen again.

The last main point, which was a point of contention between the Union and the Town, is that when these documents are being discussed in the normally public PAB hearings, the hearing will be made private with only those given access to the documents allowed to be in the room. The Union has pushed for these hearings to remain open to the public and members of the Department because we believe the only cure for corruption in Government is transparency, without it nobody can be assured that the process is fair. The Town unfortunately doesn't share this belief and made a big push to close the hearings to the public and the judge ultimately sided with them.

There's been a lot of speculation over the last few months about what these documents will show, fueled by the Town's irrational grabbing at straws to hide them, and now we'll finally have the answer. Whether they reveal corruption or nothing at all really doesn't matter at this point, the damage has been done. The employees here at EHPD have lost all faith in our Town's HR Department to conduct a competent, impartial, and transparent exam and promotional process. Whenever a new HR Director is finally appointed they're going to have a real challenge on their hands to rebuild trust and fix the complete mess Santiago Malave has made of the Department.

We are also still arguing for the release of these documents through an MPP for use during the grievance process since this order only allows us to use them in the PAB hearing. we have a hearing scheduled for that at the labor board later in the month.

The next PAB Hearing is Scheduled for Wednesday January 22nd from 1700-1900. We have a fixed end time due to another group using the room after us. This hearing will still be open to the public as we will not be using the documents at that hearing since we may not have them yet and/or will not have had time to fully review them, so members are still free to come and show their support.

January Meeting

Our January meeting will be held on Thursday January 30th at 0830 at the usual spots. Due to a packed schedule with PAB Hearings, Superior Court dates, grievances, training, and the opening of contract negotiations we are unable to do it in conjunction with a common day like we usually try to.

On the Agenda will be updates on the Sergeant test appeals/grievance, opening of labor contract negotiations, Appendix F issues, and any other issues that may arise. As always we will have an open floor for members to bring up their own issues.

If you're a Supervisor I encourage you to attend as we've recently had some productive discussions with the Chief about how to resolve the constant Appendix F disputes in contract negotiations and I'd like input from those it affects most.

Summary of Jan 8th PAB Hearing

Thanks again to everyone who came and sat in on the hearing last night. Unfortunately it got off to a rocky start with confusion over the start time so we didn't get started until around 1730, and once we did there were a few Administrative motions by board members. Based on the language of the motions and the support from two of the three Board members, it seems to me as though the majority of the Board agrees with the Appellant's position that the Town should be open and transparent with test results to get this rather simple issue cleared up instead of muddying the waters with deception and unnecessary secrecy.

Once we got the hearing started Attorney McEleney began by submitting all the documents he was going to be referring to in his case to the Board as exhibits. The Town's attorney Meredith Diette objected and insisted that the entire 58 page FOI packet the Town gave me months ago including the letters to the examiners and candidates be entered as 58 separate exhibits instead of as one whole document. So we all sat there while all 58 pages were individually numbered and entered. This set the tone for the rest of the hearing with Attorney Diette objecting to almost every document submitted by the appellants after that, including one that was just a chart listing all the candidates and their grades, and relevant emails between the candidates and HR Director Malave.

Both Attorneys then gave their opening statements with Attorney McEleney using his time to simply lay out the facts of the case and reasons for the appeals as we've laid out on here previously. Attorney Diette then gave her statement which continued the Town's theme of "nothing wrong happened but we're not going to prove it you, and you need to stop asking." During her statement however she repeatedly stressed that the one candidate with the perfect score and 28 point gap to second place was female, bringing it up over and over again with a strong verbal emphasis. It was obvious to everyone there that Attorney Diette was trying to make the implication that this appeal was only happening because the appellants had some sort of sexist bias and not because everyone else who took the test either failed or just barely passed with a minimum score. Not only is her implication unfounded and offensive to our members, but it seems pretty stupid to accuse your client's employees of sexism against a coworker while your client is actively being sued by that same coworker for sexism in the workplace. I'm no lawyer but that seems like a pretty bad legal strategy to me. Chief Sansom complains about morale being low among the ranks, why not try telling your lawyer not to make completely unfounded implications of illegal behavior by your employees in a public hearing as a morale booster?

In fact when the first appellant, began his testimony the first thing he did was call out Attorney Diette on her offensive comments to which she had no response. He then went on to detail his extensive preparation for the tests, the test questions and his feelings on them, his discussions with other candidates and employees about his answers and his lack of understanding of his score. He also described how after the scores were released, he was mislead by Human Resources.

The Officer explained that he went to HR and asked Suzan Kyeremateng how he could view his test results to help understand his score and she told him he would have to wait 15 days after the posting to look at them, but he would be able to. A short time later he learned that in order to file a PAB appeal he only had 14 days, so had he taken Suzan's advice he would have missed the window to file an appeal. Either she isn't familiar with the processes of the Department she works in, or she intentionally mislead the Officer to prevent him from filing an appeal. After realizing this he emailed HR Director Malave and asked how he could view his test results, Malave responded that he would have to file an FOI request, but implied that after that he'd be able to see them. Several days after filing the FOI Malave responded that it was denied and refused to show him anything. This whole exchange was captured via email, when a copy of the email was submitted as an exhibit Attorney Diette objected and was able to keep it from being seen by the Board members. Fortunately during a blunder later during cross examination she accidentally opened the door to the email and it was allowed to be submitted to the Board.

This seems like a recurring theme with HR where we never can quite tell if they're simply incompetent, or if they know exactly what they're doing and are just lying. Either way our members should take it as a warning for future interactions with them that you cant believe anything they tell you. You're going to have to look things up for yourself.

We had a scheduled stop time of 2000, and during her cross examination of the first Officer Attorney Diette seemed to be asking a number of repetitive or irrelevant questions while repeatedly looking at the clock. It seemed to me and others watching that she was simply trying to waste time  and run down the clock to prevent Attorney McEleney from calling another witness that day, and she succeeded in running just past 2000. Fortunately for us, the PAB, perhaps noticing Attorney Diette's tactic, allowed McEleney to call one more witness before adjourning.

Attorney McEleney called one of our members who took the Detective's exam in 2018. That member detailed how she questioned her oral board score and requested of Mr. Malave that she be allowed to view her score sheets. Mr. Malave not only allowed her to see the sheets, but he didn't request that she file an FOI or take any other additional steps. It was a completely different exchange to the one Officers had with this test. Of course this exchange was also captured in an email chain which Attorney McEleney tried to give to the Board members but Attorney Diette again objected to it.

The hearing was adjourned after that. The next hearing will be in two weeks on Jan 22nd at 1700, unless they change it to 1730. We expect that the Appellants will proceed with the rest of their witnesses on that date.

PAB Hearing this Wednesday January 8th

The Personnel Appeals Board hearing for this Wednesday is going forward. The plan is to have the appellants and other witnesses on our side testify at this hearing. The hearing will take place at 1700 hours in Town Council Chambers at Town Hall. If you're free and would like to attend to show your support or just learn more about what's going on with the process, the hearing is open to the public and we encourage you to attend.

CALEA is all done, so why are still paying $110,135 annually for it, while critical services go unfunded?

Last month the Administration wrapped up the project that's been their main focus since they got here in 2014 of obtaining CALEA accreditation. There was an earlier post back in July where we went over the high cost of getting accredited and how it's generally useless to the employees and the people of the Town so we wont rehash that here.

What I'd like to discuss is now that we have the accreditation, what's it going to cost us year to year to maintain it, and how it's disrupting the core Police functions of the Department. The finances of the Department aren't really the business of the Union, we don't have any say in what they spend money on. However when we have important training being cut and denied to our members, and our SWAT team struggling to obtain basic equipment they need to do their jobs safely because the Administration claims it doesn't have the funding, it becomes our business.

Shortly after this Administration took Office in 2014 they created a full time position for an Officer to work on Accreditation. Now that we've completed it that Officer has not been pulled from that assignment and continues to work on... I don't know what, while collecting a base salary of $74,209 plus benefits. This wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that we currently have a staffing shortage Department wide. In fact when I asked why we haven't made any more Detectives off our current active list I was told it was because the Chief was concerned about Patrol staffing and didn't want to promote anyone unnecessarily because then they would become ineligible to work Patrol. So they've effectively sacrificed an investigative position that does actual Police work directly benefiting the citizens in order to maintain an accreditation position that no longer serves any real purpose. This seems counterintuitive considering the stated mission of CALEA is to provide Chiefs with "a blueprint that promotes the efficient use of resources and improves service delivery." Doesn't this seem like the push for CALEA has in fact made us use resources less efficiently and been detrimental to our delivery of core Police services?

Furthermore, a part time consultant was also hired to assist with Accreditation at a rate of $31,861 a year. This consultant also still works here despite the job he was brought in to consult on being completed. I did consulting work myself prior to becoming an Officer, and at every job I had as soon as the work I was hired to do was done, I was let go and moved on to the next one. So why is this guy being kept on staff, is he now a permanent employee? What's he doing now?

After the Accreditation was completed, our Department sent a delegation consisting of seven people to the CALEA Conference in Kentucky for a week. That included the entire command staff and the Mayor. That's flights, hotel rooms, and probably rental cars for seven people coming out of our budget that's apparently so strapped we cant afford basic equipment needed to do our jobs. And why was a part time employee taken on a field trip to Kentucky while our Officers are regularly being denied off site training classes they actually need to do their jobs supposedly due to funding shortages? Seems like the Chief has his priorities backwards.

So where could this money be better spent rather than on Accreditation? Let's dive into some of the ongoing issues the supposed lack of funding has created. First off look at our firearms unit. We're down to training once a year with our duty weapons, and when we do get to shoot we're limited in how much we can actually shoot due to a lack of ammunition because we cant afford it. We don't use our firearms frequently, but when we do, proficiency is critical to ensure the safety of our Officers and those we serve. Any firearms expert will tell you shooting is skill that is heavily reliant on repetition and muscle memory, once a year just isn't enough to build that up.

We also have non lethal beanbag shotguns sitting in our armory that our Firearms Unit has been trying to get out to Officers on the road for over a year. But the Admin refuses to authorize the training for these tools so we have another non lethal option available on hot calls. I can only assume this refusal is cost related because there doesn't seem to be any other logical explanation. Holding up the rollout of these shotguns could have the effect of forcing us to use lethal force when we maybe wouldn't have to if there was another option available.

Additionally we've heard from several members of the SWAT team that all of their ballistic vests and helmets are well past their expiration dates and Deputy Chief Hawkins has refused to authorize the purchase of replacement equipment. Yes this equipment is expensive, but once purchased it's good for ten years. Some of our SWAT Officers are wearing hand me down uniforms that are several sizes too big for them, and some of them weren't given any uniform at all and are instead forced to wear their US military issued uniforms or personally owned clothes to calls. How are we so broke that we cant even afford to buy a couple pairs of pants and shirts, but Accreditation has a blank check book?

You may also remember a while back when our 30+ year old SWAT armored vehicle caught on fire while driving on Route 2 and was totaled. That vehicle was never replaced, instead our SWAT team rides around in what is basically a moving van with no armor plating whatsoever. We had an opportunity to obtain a free used armored car from Brinks, all we had to do was go to a conference near Washington DC, fill out the paperwork and drive it home. Somehow DC Hawkins managed to make it all the way down there on the Town's dime, spend a few days hob knobbing at the conference, and never filled out the paperwork to get the truck, coming home empty handed. His explanation to the SWAT team was that he couldn't find the Brinks booth at the convention center. Now ignoring the fact that he simply could have asked someone for directions at any point during the several days he spent there, I've heard from others who were at that conference that the Brinks booth was literally the first thing you saw when you walked in the door. It was so prominent in fact that several people mistook it for the general information booth. I don't know if this is incompetence or intentional, but either way it's foolish to waste an opportunity to get free equipment that we desperately need.

Interestingly enough, when the CALEA on site evaluators came to EHPD to do their inspection, that very day a brand new armored SWAT vehicle appeared in our parking lot for them to inspect. However as soon as they left, the brand new SWAT truck disappeared, never to be seen again. I hear it was on loan from another Department. Does the Administration think our SWAT team is a joke? Do they have no respect or concern for the safety of any of the Officers who train hard to be on it? I cant think of any explanation other than complete incompetence for their actions here. We have highly skilled Officers who've quit the team because it's been so neglected over the years. This leaves both our Officers on street, and the citizens of the Town in a more dangerous position.

Our fleet is in shambles, training is at bare minimum levels, our guns don't shoot straight, and we don't have enough computers for a whole squad to use at the same time, and God forbid you need a pen or a notepad, they wont buy us those anymore either! We don't even allow employees below the rank of Sergeant have access to color printers because the toner is too expensive. And sadly that's just the tip of the dysfunction iceberg.

We all understand this isn't Glastonbury, money isn't falling off trees in East Hartford. But how can you impose such strict austerity upon your employees while spending lavishly on your pet projects right under our noses and expect us to see it as anything other than disrespectful?

Accreditation has been the greatest fraud perpetrated on this Department and this Town in my tenure here. Chief Sansom told the Journal Inquirer "Achieving Accreditation helps safeguard the integrity of this Department and ensures consistent delivery of high quality public safety services. It's a mark of excellence." In our experience as line Officers it's done just the opposite while burdening us with unnecessary policies and requirements that do nothing to better our performance. We implore Chief Sansom, do the right thing, invest in your Department and your employees before you burn this organization down to a smoking heap. But hey, I guess it'll at least be an Accredited smoking heap, right?

HR Director Santiago Malave Out? UPDATED

One of our members noticed today that the job of Human Resources Director had been posted a week ago on the Town's website, you can find the posting at this link. Though we haven't seen any confirmation, we can only assume this means current HR Director Santiago Malave, who's at the center of the current Sergeant test scandal, and previously the Fire Department promotional exam scandal, is on his way out.

The timing of his departure is intriguing since we're less than a week a way from a hearing in Superior Court where we will argue for the forced release of the evaluator notes and score sheets from the Sergeant's exam that he's been fighting tooth and nail to keep hidden. Of course he could be leaving for any number of reasons, perhaps he's jumping ship before the documents come out and reveal something he or his subordinates did, or the Mayor could be forcing him out, or maybe he just found a better job elsewhere that'll pay him more than the $105,622 salary East Hartford gives him.

Either way Mr. Malave's potential departure is a great thing for our Union and every other Town Union. Aside from his botching of multiple promotional exams, he has acted as nothing more than a rubber stamp for the Chief's decisions during the grievance process where he's supposed to be a neutral arbiter. During my involvement with the Union since 2014 Mr. Malave has never once sided with our Union in any of his Step 2 grievance decisions, instead agreeing with the Chief every time. We've appealed almost all of his rulings to the Labor Board which has overturned Malave's decisions one hundred percent of the time. That's right, every single decision he's ruled on that we've appealed has been overturned. This includes one ruling where he told me to my face after the hearing that he agreed with the Union's position, but then issued his ruling in favor of the Town because I assume he was afraid to go against the Chief of Police.

Mr. Malave's refusal to grant a fair and impartial hearing has wasted hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars of both taxpayer and Union funds by forcing us to take grievances before the Labor Board that could have easily been resolved at the HR level had he done his job properly. We can only hope that whoever replaces him will do the job correctly and give the Unions a fair hearing when we go before him or her so we're not constantly running over to Wethersfield. It would be a huge plus if they know how to run a promotional exam without getting dragged to Court too.

UPDATE: We're hearing Malave is out mid-January before the decision from Superior Court should come down. The line we're hearing from the Admin/Town Hall is that this departure has been planned for at least a year. Of course this makes no sense at all, if you know a critical Department head is on his way out for a year, why would you wait until one month before his departure to post for his job? Don't you think they'd want ample time for qualified candidates to apply, and be interviewed and vetted before the spot goes vacant rather than doing it at the last minute? File that one under "not buying it."

December Meeting

Our December Meeting will be on Thursday the 19th at 1630 at the usual place. We're doing it a bit earlier in the month due to the holidays. I don't think we'll have much new business on the agenda so if you have something you'd like to bring up during Open Floor this would be a good meeting to do that.

The Dumpster Fire Formerly Known as Internal Affairs

We've done a lot of writing on this blog about the mess the Sergeant's test has become, but unfortunately that's not the only mess EHPD has to offer these days. One of the complaints we hear most these days is about the conduct of Internal Affairs. I know for people outside the Department you're probably thinking it's typical for Cops to complain about IA, after all they're the ones who investigate us for alleged wrongdoing. But that's not what's got our members upset, instead it's about what IA isn't doing. Unfortunately over the last few years under our current Administration, our IA Division has been used to protect certain individuals by burying investigations, or just not doing them at all.

We've seen, and continue to see internal complaints against certain employees for various policy violations not being investigated fully, witnesses not being interviewed, and eventually completely tossed off to the side as "unfounded." Now this isn't because the guys in IA are incompetent or don't know how to investigate, because they do. In fact they demonstrate that when they get a complaint against an employee who isn't one of the "chosen ones" who merits special treatment. In those cases the investigation gets done and if it finds something, discipline gets handed out, just like the system is supposed to work. And if they really don't like the guy, they'll even go do things like pull security camera footage and dispatch recordings, interview witness after witness, pull phone and fax records, omit exculpatory evidence, and anything else they can think of to build a case even if it just results in a written reprimand.

That's the issue, it's not the punishment being handed out, but the extreme and obvious disparity in how investigations are handled for certain individuals compared to the rest of us. Perhaps it's who you know, where you came from, who you go to "Thirsty Thursday" with, or play basketball with on the weekends that decides whether you'll get a free pass or the full monte. Whatever the reason is, I think we can all agree it's wrong, and it needs to stop.

I'm not putting the blame on the Sergeant and Lieutenant assigned to IA, I think they're both respectable guys who want to do their jobs the right way. But they don't get to call the shots, they don't get to decide who gets investigated and who doesn't, and they don't get to decide the discipline handed out. Those decisions get made by the Chief and his Deputies, so they're responsible for the current state of IA. This isn't just "taking care of the good ol' boys," we're getting to the point where it's looking like flat out corruption, and it's not something anyone wearing a badge should stand for.

Our Union can't force the Administration to conduct their IA's properly, that's their responsibility. However the one thing we can do is make sure that everyone gets the same treatment, regardless of who they know upstairs. So every time IA has made an investigation disappear or whitewashed it for one of their chosen ones, we've been quietly making note of it. And now those cases have become the new standard. However they were handled for their buddies, that's how they're going to have to be handled for everyone else. And we'll take those cases to the Labor Board and let the Chief explain to them why two people are being treated differently.

We don't want excessive discipline, and we don't want micromanagement, but we do need to have some basic standards for conduct. That million dollar Accreditation certificate is worth about as much as the used up urinal cakes in the patrol bathroom if we're going to allow allies of the Administration to flout the rules at will with no repercussions.

Summary of Nov 18th Personnel Appeals Board Hearing

Thanks again to everyone who came and showed their support at the last meeting. This was a preliminary hearing where we were going to try and convince the Personnel Appeals Board (PAB) to force Human Resources to release the evaluator notes and score sheets. Obviously our guys who filed appeals need these documents to help make their case for why they think the process should be done over. As you can imagine it's pretty hard to make a case for an appeal when you're not allowed to see what you're appealing, this is why they have discovery in the Court system. Unfortunately that doesn't exist in our appeals process.

Our Union attorney Steve McEleney wrote a lengthy brief for the PAB members before the hearing explaining his argument for why he believes the Board has subpoena power and can force the release of the documents. The PAB members were supposed to get these briefs a few days before the hearing so they would be prepared beforehand. However once the hearing got started we found out the Board members never received the briefs that were supposed to be sent to them by HR Director Santiago Malave, because he never forwarded them along. Shocking I know.

So as a result Attorney McEleney had to make his case from scratch at the hearing. He had several citations including the Town Charter, Town Ordnances, and State Law to support his case that the PAB does have the authority to subpoena documents from the Town. However the Town's Corporation Counsel Scott Chadwick agreed with the Town's other Attorney Meredith Diette that the Town Charter and Ordnances Attorney McEleney cited are actually illegal and advised the PAB that they don't have subpoena power. His decision is binding upon the Board.

I suppose we should'nt be too surprised that the Town's lawyer agreed with the Town's other lawyer that the Town shouldn't release documents that might get the Town sued if they uncover some sort of mal/misfeasance. But it's still pretty shocking that they went so far as to claim their own Town Charter is illegal to make their case.

What this reveals to us is that this appeals process is inherently stacked against the appellants. How can it be considered a fair process when an employee who files an appeal isn't allowed to see any documentation related to what they're appealing and has to make their argument solely from memory? Yet the Town is able to manipulate the evidence by only showing things that benefit their argument, and hiding facts that aren't in their favor? This entire process needs a complete overhaul if it's ever going to be considered fair.

Attorney McEleney called one of our members who took a different promotional exam recently to testify. Our member testified that she had doubts about the score she received on her Oral Board so she contacted Director Malave and asked to see her evaluator's notes to help make sense of her score. In that case Director Malave invited her to his office and showed her all the evaluator notes, and as a result she understood why her score was what it was and ended up not filing an appeal. That's what we've been asking for from the beginning in this case that could've avoided all this mess. So why did it suddenly become such a secret with this particular test?

Attorney Diette claimed the Town has a right to not show the test documents and in the previous case they chose to waive their right and show our member her results, but in this case they chose not to. She didn't offer any explanation as to why they changed their policy. Ms. Diette told the PAB that she plans to bring the panel members to testify and that is all the evidence that they need to see, and absent a Court order she has no intention of showing the documents to the Union or the PAB.

Attorney McEleney rebutted that while he would love to question the evaluators, he can't effectively form questions for them without seeing the documents that he's questioning them about. Therefore he requested the PAB postpone all hearings until he has an opportunity to try and force the release of the documents in Superior Court.

At that point the three members of the PAB spoke. They unanimously agreed that they want to see all of the evidence including the notes, not just the hand selected bits that HR chooses to release, and agreed to hold off on any future hearings until the Superior Court process plays out. Thankfully the PAB members seem to see through the Town's charade and understand what appears to really be going on here, an attempt to conceal something unfavorable to HR.

With that the meeting adjourned. Check our other post with the dates of the future hearings if you're interested in coming. Dates may be cancelled if the Superior Court hasn't ruled yet.

Arbitrability of Promotional Test Grievance Won

We were notified yesterday of the resolution to the hearing we attended last month to address the Town's challenge of the validity of our grievance over the Sergeant's oral board exam. The panel of three arbitrators unanimously sided with the Union that the case is arbitrable and must be heard. The fact that even the Town's arbitrator sided with the Union demonstrates how ridiculous the challenge was to begin with.

This is not a decision on the merits of the case, it simply means that the case can proceed to a "step 3" hearing where a decision one way or the other will be issued. Concurrently we also have our MPP filing to try and get the associated documents working it's way through a separate process which will need to be resolved before we can have the step 3, we're still waiting for that decision to come down.

Personnel Hearing Schedule

Thanks to everyone who showed up at the Personnel Appeals Board hearing Monday night. We'll discuss it at the meeting Tuesday and I'll try to get something posted up here about it as soon after as I can. Here is the schedule for the remainder of the hearings, all PAB hearing are open to the public and anyone can attend to witness. They will be at Town Hall in Town Council Chambers unless another venue is found.

Wednesday Jan 8th at 1700 (This date may be cancelled if a Suprior Court issue is not resolved before then.)

Wednesday Jan 22nd at 1700

Monday Jan 27th at 1700

Monday Feb 10th at 1700

November Meeting

Our November meeting will be on Tuesday the 26th at 0830 at the usual place. Topics of discussion will consist of the latest on the Sergeant's test, CHRO, passage of the pension deal, and anything else that comes up between now and then. We will also open the floor to anyone who wants it.

New Pension Contract for EHPOA.

We're excited to announce the new pension agreement we have come to with the Town that has been approved by Town Council and will go into effect January 1st 2020 and is valid until December 31st 2029. Shortly after the current Executive Board took office this past April the Administration approached us about two policies that they needed to enact to complete their CALEA Accreditation process. These policies constituted a significant change in working conditions are were therefore subject to collective bargaining.

We met with the Chiefs and discussed their draft policies, they were very open to the suggestions we had to modify the policies to make them work better and reduce their negative impact on our membership. In exchange for not contesting the implementation of the new policies, we asked for an extension to our pension contract which was due to expire on December 31st 2021. Chief Sansom relayed our request to then Finance Director Mike Walsh who responded that the Town did not want to extend our contract because they were looking to reduce benefits and costs in upcoming negotiations. He did however offer to enter off the record negotiations on a new contract that would offer reduced benefits for new hires while locking in benefits for current employees. We took this offer and began working out the details off the record.

These are the details of the final agreement we came to after negotiations:

All current employee's pension benefits shall remain unchanged and not be opened to renegotiation for the duration of their employment. Neither the Town nor the Union can request to re-open the terms for that group of employees.

The following changes will apply to new hires starting after Jan 1st, 2020. The annual multiplier will be reduced from the current 2.5% per year to 2.33% resulting in a 58.25% payout after 25 years as opposed to the current 62.5%. Additionally lump sum payments for comp time, and sick leave will no longer be calculated into final average salary.

Cost of living adjustment will also be reduced from 2% per year starting 4 years after retirement for current employees, to 1% per year starting 6 years after retirement. Finally, new employees will contribute 9% of their salary annually instead of the 8% current employees will continue to pay.

Other than those four changes everything else will stay the same for the new employees, the term will remain 25 years maxing out at 30 years, vesting is still at 15 years, the DROP plan remains, and overtime except PJs will still be included in final average salary.

All in all, this plan is a win for everyone involved, current employees will still be able to collect the benefits we were promised when we were hired. Our new hires will still have a great pension plan available to them that's better than what many competing Departments are currently offering. Additionally our pension plan should become more sustainable over the long term which is a huge win for all our members past, present and future, and for the Town which should experience significant savings.

We also negotiated some small changes to our time off policies that should make it easier for our employees on minimum staffing to use their time off without causing any extra overtime so there's no penalty to the Town. The MOU for that has been signed and is in effect, we'll incorporate the new language into our next labor contract.

Thanks to everyone who helped to make this deal a reality including Chief Sansom and his Administrative team, Mayor Leclerc, and Former Finance Director Mike Walsh. I especially want to thank all of the members of our Executive Board. This really was a team effort and the deal we have was shaped by everyone's input and I'm really proud of this board and the contract we put together. Thank you all.