A union that represents county employees, including 911 operators, public health nurses and sheriff’s deputies, wants county voters to have a chance to approve a provision giving them binding arbitration in negotiations with the county.

But county officials and the union that represents teachers are questioning tactics being used by an out-of-state firm hired to obtain signatures for the ballot question.

“I don’t care about people getting signatures, I just don’t want people doing it in our name,” said Cheryl Bost, president of the Teachers Association of Baltimore County. The union represents 6,000 teachers and other school employees in the county.

The teachers’ union is not asking for binding arbitration with the county, primarily because the union negotiates its contracts with the county school system and not Baltimore County government, Bost said.

The signature collectors, who work for Portland, Ore.-based Democracy Resources, are blanketing the county in an attempt to collect about 14,000 signatures by Aug. 11 in order to put the issue before county voters.

Potential signers of the petition are being told that the petition is meant to help improve working conditions for county teachers and give the group the right to binding arbitration — similar to what the county police officer and firefighter unions already have.

One such signature collector made just such a statement as he solicited a reporter to sign the petition at the July 31 Towson Farmers’ Market.

Jim Miller, president of the Baltimore County Federation of Public Employees, said there was no intent to mislead county voters.

“There may have been some confusion on the part of the company we hired because the American Federation of Teachers are our parent organization with American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees,” Miller said.

County police and firefighters won the right to collective bargaining in 2002 after voters approved a referendum issue passed by the County Council.

“Of course they enjoy a benefit from that,” Miller said. “But it put all the other unions at a disadvantage in their bargaining.”

Currently, for unions such as the one Miller represents, an independent fact-finder can review and make findings on disputes — but the findings are not binding.
A five-member county arbitration board can overrule those decisions. That board is made up of four appointees of the county executive and one representing labor.

Earlier this year, an independent fact-finder ruled that the county had enough money to pay for a 3 percent, across-the-board raise for employees represented by the Baltimore County Federation of Public Employees. The arbitration panel overruled the decision by a 4-1 vote.

“The system is broken and we’re trying to fix it,” Miller said.

If and when the required signatures are collected, Miller said the union will deliver them to the Board of Elections for verification and give the county Office of Law a copy of the question the union wants added to the November ballot. While only 10,000 signatures need to be submitted, the union is aiming to collect 14,000 to allow for the fact that some signatures will be ruled illegal for one reason or another.

Don Mohler, a county spokesman, said the county had no official position on the ballot initiative, but said there was concern that voters were being mislead into thinking they were supporting teachers.

He said he believes the signature collectors “are not confused” about what they were told to say.

“Clearly, it’s information that’s incorrect and not factual,” Mohler said. “It’s obvious from the wording that there is a clear attempt to mislead the voters. That’s a concern we’re having the law office look into. “
Bryan P. Sears is political editor for Patuxent Publishing Company’s Baltimore County papers.

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