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HomeMy WebLinkAbout02/19/2013 06 Audience Participation�Y.r i, �u. rt' ��i, `.::},,. X.:+�•. ,."ia. y5C s %.ue ., ?. *. - _ _ .. vft.. �,a� °'.;:j. .Z,: A� 4 i. �:`� tit•. h A:J f, rJ to Cd L �I J U\ I 1 Service Irrigation Usage - Irrigation Capital Improvement Program Total Sqr Footage 14000 - Irrigation Operation and Maintenance Total Sqr Footage 14000 Red- �+d!!,e:7 r- � g8. 2� x � _ � S 24 . 5"- ,P e- Ac- /4•,o06 5 �f• GbZ�1 = /(047•G9 PA a' c e. l �Jo . ! Z 14- 2 3 l l 4-0 t S c> fk tJ 4 e, h e- s Z,r-r- -�cs� a t arc b e 5.6 r i- e- t Zot 2 A nrnaft 4gS• ,7G P&-- r e-- 6- �"i. q�r�5� e /z. ') 2 Acct: 134006 Address: 401 N NACHES AVE Bill Period 15- NOV -12 to 22- JAN -13 Due. $88.26 Important Messages. • Please provide your primary phone number with your payment. Amount' $3705, $51 21 • The City of Yakima can now take online payments for city utilities. Click on Utility Payments under Online 6ervices on the city's website. Please have your utility account number available. Go to www yakimawa.gov • This statement includes all applicable state and local utility taxes. If you have any questions about your utility bill, please call the Utility Office at (509) 575 -6080 Please mail your check or money order to the Yakima City Treasurer, 129 N 2nd St, Yakima, WA 98901 -2632. S On the Road Again, But Now the Boss Is Sitting Beside You - WSJ.com age o 4 8 investing i you should von is year QcKRere_tQ v , Don't wait to find out if you're making costly investment errors. Instead, download the latest report �%I nl@l�cad Now? by Forbes columnist Ken Fisher. It's called The Eight Biggest Mistakes Investors Make and How to Avoid Them." Even If you avoid just one of these mistakes, you'll be glad you acted now! Dow Jones Reprints: This ceps- is for your t,ersonai non- rnrnmerrial use oniy To crde: preset _1tat,nn -re@Jy -,): ies for J::.;r r unan, to your rnheagaes. clients n' custcmers, use the Once Reprints too: a V-P hottnm of any snide of visit www,.djrepnnts coin See a sample reprint in PDF format. Order a reprint of this article now TM WMI MT JOi1BAL. vffij-mm THE A -HED ; May 14, 2004 On the Road Again, But Now the Boss Is Sitting Beside You Workers Chafe. as BusinessesF,rnbrace G.PS Trackers; A Cop Caught Napping By CHARLES FORELLE Staff Reporter ofTHE WALL STREET JOURNAL After hearing complaints that police officers in Clinton Township, N.J., were doing a lot of loafing, Sgt. John Kuczynski sprang into action. Without telling the patrolmen, the internal - affairs officer installed a global - positioning- system tracking device behind the front grills of several patrol cars in the spring and summer of 2001. Then he used a laptop to keep track of each car's precise movements on detailed maps. Sgt. Kuczynski soon netted five officers loitering over meals or hanging out in parking lots. Their log books indicated they were patrolling the townships' streets or watching for speeders on its three highways. Four of the officers pleaded guilty that year to charges of filing false records and were barred from working in New Jersey law enforcement. A fifth, Barry Krejdovski, a then -28- year -old officer who was literally caught napping on the job, disputed the charges. He was convicted in November on the records violation and a more serious charge that was later set aside. Three of the officers who pleaded guilty are suing the town to get their jobs back. KEEPING TRACK Estimated ntinitwr of atttotnntic vehicle trackers insvilled fm fleet v€?tairies" in the 0 S 1.5 million 3"i Ai t, I:P. _ P 1 R 2090 2001 2442 2043 2004 2005 pro to'd InvAidcs vuhi(jet; d't! {pak:hod as part of a fleet, su.t, uo lads v. burrs, ddivGry v:fnt; w d V ailu- hailers �;uu, cm C: ,, S i;;; Yh.3trts As employers increasingly turn to GPS technology to keep track of their fleets, more workers are balking at having the boss constantly looking over their shoulders. Independent snowplow drivers in Massachusetts staged a demonstration at the state capitol last year after they were required by the state to carry GPS - enabled cellphones. Washington state garbage collectors are protesting the installation of the devices on their trucks. And Teamsters union officials are watching closely to make sure the devices aren't used to punish employees. Developed in the 1970s for military use, GPS relies on a cluster of satellites orbiting 12,500 miles above Earth. The satellites emit coded signals, which a ground -based receiver can pick up to triangulate its own position. GPS trackers remained expensive niche products through http: / /online.wsi.com /article /0 „SB 108448724279211265,00.html 2/19/2013 On the Road Again, But Now the Boss Is Sitting Beside You - WSJ.com Page 2 of 4 much of the 199os largely because they were difficult to use and it was expensive to relay location data from a moving truck back to a company's home base. Now, thanks to the spread of cheap cellular- phone•service, the devices can send the information as easily as a commuter can make a call from the road. Without clear limits on when the devices can be used to track workers, employers are testing the boundaries of GPS. That's especially frustrating to independent- minded workers such as truckers, who have long treasured their freedom from close supervision. Many of those workers are accustomed to being paid for specific performance -- getting a shipment from one place to another, for instance -- and chafe at the idea of having their routes closely tracked. In King County, Wash., the municipal government is installing GPS receivers on the roughly 200 tractors and trailers that haul solid waste between landfills and transfer stations. Theresa Jennings, the county's solid -waste director, says the primary purpose of the system is to improve efficiency. Supervisors, for example, can automatically determine which trailers of trash have been waiting longest at depots. But last year, Teamsters Local 174 filed an unfair - labor - practice charge with the state's public - employee commission, arguing that the installation needs to be subject to collective bargaining. The union contended that drivers have been told they could be in trouble if the tracker reports they are straying from their routes. The union missed a filing date to provide more information, and the charge was dismissed, though the union says it will refile if a driver is disciplined. That hasn't yet happened, and the union has sought written assurance from the county that it won't. George Raffle, the union organizer who was responsible for the filing, says trucks follow set routes, so there's no need to use the GPS devices for routing. A driver might exercise his judgment to avoid a traffic jam or slick roads, but a supervisor might see that as an unauthorized detour to a side road, Mr. Raffle says. The trackers "don't take into account all the unknown factors: road conditions, weather conditions, what's the load," he says. Ms. Jennings says that the county doesn't as yet plan to use GPS tracking to punish drivers, and so no bargaining is necessary to install the trackers. The national Teamsters union is closely watching a plan by United Parcel Service Inc. to include GPS capabilities on its next generation of delivery scanners -- the electronic tablets that store delivery data. A Teamsters spokesman said the union isn't necessarily against the use of tracking technology but stressed that safeguards need to be in place to "ensure that it doesn't result in an invasion of privacy or is used to "get" an employee." UPS officials say the company is as much as two years away from actually using GPS on the scanners. They say that the company would use the technology to improve customer service -- for example, to quickly reroute packages in transit -- and not driver discipline. UPS already has GPS devices on its tractor - trailer trucks, which haul packages between warehouses. Last December, snowplow operators in Massachusetts marched outside the state capitol to protest a new requirement that they carry cellphories with GPS receivers. As independent contractors paid by the hour, they feared the highway department would use the tracking data to unfairly squeeze their payments. Satellite tracking equipment, they complained, could wrongly label a plower stuck in a traffic jam as napping by the side of the road. The Massachusetts highway department said that it is confident the devices can accurately track plowers. http: / /online.wsj.com /article /0 „SB 108448724279211265,00.html 2/19/2013 On the Road Again, But Now the Boss Is Sitting Beside You - WSJ.com Page 3 of 4 After hundreds of plowers packed a rowdy legislative hearing at Boston's State House, the highway department partially backed down. The compromise: Drivers began carrying the GPS phones but are being paid according to the old- fashioned paper timesheets they submit. The contract runs until the end of the year. In Mecklenburg County, N.C., a sprawling district encompassing the Charlotte metropolitan area, officials say a new GPS - enabled dispatch and routing system has shaved 1o% off the time it takes ambulances to respond to emergency calls. The system automatically tells 911 dispatchers which ambulance is closest to the call and provides the best route to an address. The system, based on software from California vendor ESRI Inc., also captures historical data about travel speeds, allowing dispatchers to route ambulances around potential rush -hour trouble spots. Sabby Nayar, a marketing manager for MapInfo Corp., a Troy, N.Y., maker of mapping software, says the benefit of GPS trackers on police cruisers is obvious. "If the officer is injured, you know where he is, and you know where his car is," Mr. Nayar says. In Clinton Township, the devices were installed specifically to check up on the officers. Some of the officers were missing for hours at a time, sometimes on daytime shifts, but Mr. Krejdovski was unaccounted for less than two hours in the middle of the night. According to Mr. Krejdovski's activity logs, he checked a residence, a cemetery and a cluster of car dealerships in the early morning hours. But the GPS showed his cruiser, unmoving, for much of that time in a McDonald's parking lot, overlooking a car wash and a Japanese restaurant nestled at the intersection of two highways. The three officers who are suing the town to get their jobs back claim that idling was a department - wide practice in the two- dozen - member force. The activity reports used to build the town's case against them were simply "busy sheets," intended to demonstrate that the officer was on duty, not precise records of his movements, one officer testified at Mr. Krejdovski's trial. They also claim they were deliberately singled out for the tracking because superiors wanted a pretext to get rid of them. The township's attorney declines to comment on the case. Sgt. Kuczynski, the internal - affairs officer, said in an interview that his tracking program "may appear to be extreme" but that the department had a "systemic" absence problem. Mr. Krejdovski, now 31, declined to comment on the case. He testified at his trial that his GPS - tracked nap occurred because he was exhausted from a stomach virus, compounded by the flu medication he was taking. He admitted that he waited until shortly before the end of his shift at 7 a.m. to fill out most of his reports and that they were sloppy and incorrect. "I was just trying to guesstimate at what time I had gone through those areas," he said on the witness stand. Testimony established that his reports deviated from his actual location, as determined by the GPS, for about 76 minutes. Mr. Krejdovski's lawyer, Walter Lesnevich, argued that his client was a young cop who made a mistake and was unfairly swept up in a dragnet aimed at catching more - serious offenders. When he was tracked another night, Mr. Krejdovski's log matched up with the GPS tracker. The jury convicted Mr. Krejdovski on both charges he faced. New Jersey Superior Court Judge Victor Ashrafi was not so convinced. He set aside the jury's verdict on the official misconduct charge -- which would have carried jail time -- and sentenced Mr. Krejdovski to probation and community service. His conviction means he will never be able to work in law enforcement again. The nap, the b.ttn• / /r..1;.�A ­ ; QPI0QAAQ77d77Q71 17tiS 00 html 7 /I 9 /7n1 i On the Road Again, But Now the Boss Is Sitting Beside You - WSJ.com Page 4 of 4 judge ruled, "did not result in any actual damage or loss to the public, other than the loss of Officer Krejdovski's services during a period of fewer than 90 minutes." Write to Charles Forelle at charles.forelle0wsj.com Copyright 2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved This copy is for your personal, non - commercial use only Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law For non - personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1 -800- 843 -0008 or visit www.djreprints.coni httn•//nnline, w¢i.cnm/ article /0- .1;B10844972427921 1265.00.html 2/19/2013 Unions vs. Taxpayers - WSJ.com Page 1 of 3 Dow -ones F•ernnis This copy IS for your persnna n:Y:n- cnl'r'"ndreial uce o:nl: To orle' pre <entatlon - ready io�les'or disfr :Uuflon to youf ��Ile?t3U8S. 0ients o customers. use the rde. P.epnnts too: a' the bol�nrn of any . = "rticle or visit www dgeprints_com See a sample reprint in PDF format. Order a reprint of this article now OPINION May 14, 2009 Unions vs. Taxpayers Organized labor has become byfar the most powerfi 1 political force in government. By STEVE MALANGA Across the private sector, workers are swallowing hard as their employers freeze salaries, cancel bonuses, and institute longer work days. America's employees can see for themselves how steeply business has fallen off, which is why many are accepting cost - saving measures with equanimity -- especially compared to workers in France, where riots and plant takeovers have become regular news. I 41i ?. AP Government workers protest in California, March 13 But then there is the U.S. public sector, where the mood seems very European these days. In New Jersey, which faces a $3.3 billion budget deficit, angry state workers have demonstrated in Trenton and taken Gov. Jon Corzine to court over his plan to require unpaid furloughs for public employees. In New York, public - sector unions have hit the airwaves with caustic ads denouncing Gov. David Paterson's promise to lay off state workers if they continue refusing to forgo wage hikes as part of an effort to close a $17.7 billion deficit. In Los Angeles County, where the schools face a budget deficit of nearly, $600 million, school employees have balked at a salary freeze and vowed to oppose any layoffs that the board of education says it will have to pursue if workers don't agree to concessions. Call it a tale of two economies. Private - sector workers -- unionized and nonunion alike -- can largely see that without compromises they may be forced to join unemployment lines. Not so in the public sector. Government unions used their influence this winter in Washington to ensure that a healthy chunk of the federal stimulus package was sent to states and cities to preserve public jobs. Now they are fighting tenacious and largely successful local battles to safeguard salaries and benefits. Their gains, of course, can only come at the expense of taxpayers, which is one reason why states and cities are approving tens of billions of dollars in tax increases. It's not as if we haven't seen this coming. When the movement among public- sector workers to unionize began gathering momentum in the 1950s, some critics, including private- sector labor leaders such as George Meany, observed that government is a monopoly not subject to the discipline of the marketplace. Allowing these workers -- many already protected by civil- service law http: / /online.wsi.com /article /SB 124227027965718333.html 2/19/2013 Unions vs. Taxpayers - WSJ.com Page 2 of 3 -- to organize and bargain collectively might ultimately give them the power to hold politicians and taxpayers hostage. It wasn't long before such fears were realized. By the mid- 196os, dozens of cities across America were wracked by teachers' strikes that closed school systems. Groups like New York City's transit workers walked off the job in 1966, bringing business in Gotham to a near halt. The United Federation of Teachers led an illegal strike which closed down New York City schools in 1968. Widespread ire against strikes by public workers produced legislation in many states outlawing them. That prompted government workers to retreat from the picket lines into the halls of government. In Washington, they organized political action committees, set up sophisticated lobbying efforts, and used their muscle to help elect sympathetic public officials. Today, public- sector unions sit atop lists of organizations that devote the most money to lobbying and campaign contributions. In Pennsylvania, a local think tank, the Commonwealth Foundation, counted the resources of the state's teachers union a few years ago. It had 11 regional offices, 275 employees and $66 million in annual dues. In Connecticut, representatives of the teachers union camped outside the legislators' doors in 2005 to keep tabs on school reformers who were calling on these officials to expand school choice. And in California, unions spent more than $5o million in 2005 to defeat a series of ballot proposals that would have capped growth in the state's budget. Now the state's teachers union is putting its clout behind a ballot initiative, to be voted on next week, that would restore more than $9 billion in educational spending cut from the state's budget. The results of such efforts are evident in the rich rewards that public- sector employees now enjoy. A study in 2005 by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute estimated that the average public- sector worker earned 46% more in salary and benefits than comparable private- sector workers. The gap has only continued to grow. For example, state and local worker pay and benefits rose 3.1% in the last year, compared to 1.9% in the private sector, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). But the real power of the public sector is showing through in this economic crisis. Some five million private- sector workers have lost their jobs in the last year alone, and their unemployment rate is above 9% according to the BLS. By contrast, public- sector employment has grown in virtually every month of the recession, and the jobless rate for government workers is a mere 2.8 %. For anyone who thinks such low unemployment numbers are good news, remember that the bulging public sector must be paid for with revenues that most governments don't currently have. This is one reason for a spate of state and local tax increases, such as $5 billion in tax increases New York state passed in April, and $12 billion in tax increases California's legislature agreed to in February that will only become law if voters pass a series of ballot initiatives next week. The next lesson we are likely to learn is that voter revolts against new taxes are no longer effective because of the might that these public- sector groups now wield. The tax -cut uprising of the late 1970s began in California with Proposition 13 capping property taxes. It then spread to more than a dozen states before it became a national movement that helped elect Ronald Reagan. The next tax revolt, during the recession of the early 199os, helped sink officials like New Jersey Gov. James Florio and produced ballot propositions in places like Colorado that capped spending or made tax increases more difficult. http: / /online.wsi.com /article /SB 124227027965718333.html 2/19/2013 Unions vs. Taxpayers - WSJ.com Page 3 of 3 Now powerful and savvy, public unions have moved effectively to quash antitax movements. In New Jersey, public unions derailed a taxpayer revolt in 2005 by using their legislative clout to water down a bill that would have created a state constitutional convention to enact property -tax reform. Meanwhile; under pressure from unions, state legislatures in places like Florida have been tightening rules and requirements for passing voter initiatives and referenda -- blunting a favorite tool of antitax groups. In states like Iowa where public unionization rates are still low government workers have had to accept concessions. But allies of the unions in Washington are working to rectify that situation with union - friendly legislation like the card check bill, which will make organizing much easier. In the private sector such efforts will still be subject to the demands of the marketplace. Employers who are too generous with pay and benefits will be punished. In the public sector, however, more union members means more voters. And more voters means more dollars for political campaigns to elect sympathetic politicians who will enact higher taxes to foot the bill for the upward arc of government spending on workers. That will be the pattern for the indefinite future unless taxpayers find a way to roll back the enormous power public workers have acquired. Mr. Malanga is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum. Copyright 2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved This copy is for your personal, non - commercial use only Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law For non - personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1 -800- 843 -0008 or visit www.djreprints.com htty: / /online.wsi.com /article /SB 124227027965718333.html 2/19/2013