During my tenure on the City Council, I have viewed the labor negotiation process between city staff and labor representatives, who meet behind closed doors, as simply maddening. Due to the closed door nature of the meetings, it is clear that not enough information is shared with the public, employees, retirees and council members.

Although the City does a good job posting documents on its website regarding proposals and correspondence from both sides, I believe many others would rather see the interaction of union officials and city staff in real time. Thus, on Wednesday, I am asking the Rules Committee to support my recommendation to have the city and unions talk about this issue with the hope that both parties will agree to move forward and allow these meetings to be public.

The current process contributes to misinformation, which then results in ill will and hurt feelings all around. Why continue with the same process that drives people nuts? Public negotiations would open up the process so that we could avoid posturing, brinkmanship and emotional pain. This would help restore trust for those who have become disillusioned.

Last year, the City Attorney union (ALP) allowed councilmembers and the public the opportunity to attend their negotiations. As a result,  I attended all but one of the numerous public negotiation meetings involving this union, and I was the only councilmember to do so. After listening to both sides, I could not disagree with many points raised by the union. Attending these meetings allowed me to receive unfiltered information.

I believe open negotiations would do a lot to help the low public approval rating of unions. It would allow others to see what I saw while attending the attorney union negotiations. The model used by ALP in my view was a good one.

I have high respect for the City of San Jose labor relations team, but I still desire a more open process to actually end labor conflict(s). This would not affect the mediation process, which is a confidential proceeding. However, mediation is just a fraction of the entire labor negotiation process.

The public already spoke once in November 2010 by voting for arbitration to be held as public meetings. This would simply be an extension of that desire for a visible process. Ideally, it is done by mutual consent, but if not we should allow the public to decide in a future election.

I had some calls last week on the topic of pensions and the June ballot measure. Several people were under the impression that San Jose will eliminate pensions altogether, which is not the case. Other callers wanted toreplace the current system with a 401K-type benefit.

One person was against any change to the pension system, even for new employees. They felt that the role of government is to provide well-paying jobs. When I asked what alternative there might be to pension reform, the suggestion was to raise taxes. The caller shared that the city should lay off city employees to “force” residents to vote in favor of raising taxes. If the city were to adopt this scenario, we may choose to outsource those services that are no longer being provided by the former employees, not to mention, city employees would lose 100 percent of their income and residents would probably get less city services.

I think there are other options to pension reform that would save San Jose money. For example, getting out of the golf business, selling the Hayes Mansion—in fact, selling any city asset where there is a significant financial offer like the Convention Center, Mexican Heritage Plaza and parking garages. We could eliminate spending on all items not in the City Charter and outsource park maintenance at large parks.

Perhaps we should also consider following the lead of every other city in the county, which is switching from four to three fire fighters on a fire engine. However, I would suggest only the fire stations that have lower call volumes. An extra person on a fire engine, each shift, is equal to at least three police officers or many more code enforcement personnel.

Perhaps even consolidating city departments with the county to oversee, for example, the libraries would eliminate layers of management. It might take all of these items and more to add up to the costs savings with pension reform, but there are other options. Alas, if only labor negotiations were public rather than private. Perhaps then all of this would be on the table and a stronger voice for employees and residents could have been part of the discussion.

Incidentally, I asked the caller about several of the trade-offs listed above and they were against these as well. Que sera, sera …