Mayor Ron Littlefield’s proposal to consolidate core city-county public service functions, starting with police protection, has great merit as a matter of governmental efficiency broadly, and taxpayer equity for city residents specifically. Their county property taxes heavily subsidize sheriff’s patrols outside the city without benefit to them.
But threatening the City Council with a shotgun marriage of the city police and county sheriff’s departments if he didn’t get his way on keeping Freeman Cooper as chief of police was a strategic mistake and bad politics. It not only failed to advance the mayor’s goal; it backfired badly when the City Council, by a 6-2 vote Tuesday, plainly rebuked his demand.
The setback was the mayor’s making — his lack of transparency and advance planning with the City Council.
It began last week when he belatedly informed the council that Chief Cooper had submitted his resignation on Mar. 1 effective Mar. 31. He then outlined his sweetheart proposal to entice Chief Cooper to stay on the job, and asked the council to approve the contract in its weekly meeting the next day. He proposed to let the chief officially retire so he could collect a $240,000 deferred pension benefit option and begin collecting his $80,000 annual pension, and then to keep him as chief under a three-year contract at his present $116,000 annual salary.
He argued the arrangement would allow the city to take advantage of Mr. Cooper’s leadership in pending work to map out a consolidation plan for the city and county police departments. But he dismissed contentions that his arrangement for the chief effectively amounted to double-dipping on pension and salary, and that it also would hurt morale in the police department by thwarting the promotional opportunities the pension option, known as the DROP plan, was designed to promote.