Mayor sets meeting with Lynn police union

LYNN - Mayor Edward Clancy Jr. plans to meet with the attorney representing a Lynn police union tomorrow to discuss details of how the city will give about $300,000 in back pay to several officers in wake of a Superior Court appeals ruling.

"We're meeting on Wednesday morning to review the decision with the city solicitor (Michael Barry) and attorney David Grunebaum (who is representing the union) to discuss what our options are, whether to go to the Supreme Judicial Court or if the police union wants to settle," Clancy said Monday.

The Lynn Police Association claims the city owes several officers back pay after they agreed to make certain concessions, such as forgoing overtime pay on certain days and not taking pay raises, as part of an October 2003 agreement to prevent police layoffs and the city from going into bankruptcy.

According to a summary of the appeals court ruling obtained by the Item, the concessions saved the city approximately $290,360 and halted police layoffs.

The police association claimed about $7,000 of a December 2003 state Executive Office of Public Safety grant given to Lynn police, which totaled $277,815, should have been used to start paying back the officers.

The court agreed.

According to the summary of the court ruling, the EOPS grant was distributed in the following way by Police Chief John Suslak's administration: $240,515 was used for community policing initiatives, $24,304 for officer overtime, $4,120 to replace personnel, $7,276 for cellular phone bills, $1,000 for membership to the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, $300 for the Police Executive Research Forum and $300 for membership of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

Clancy said no retroactive money has been paid back to the officers.

"It's a close case in contractual law. We just take a different look at it than the union," he said.

In its defense, the city claimed that strict financial safeguards in a 1985 city law - implemented that year after pressure from the state, which had given Lynn $3.5 million in bailout money to prevent police layoffs and bankruptcy - prevented itself from paying back the officers by using the EOPS grant.

Clancy did not want to discuss specifics as to why the city feels its not entitled to pay the officers using the grant money, but said, "A grant came in [and] we didn't take the grant as being local aid."

"Additional assistance and local aid accounts had been trimmed. We took this grant as something we had been counting on and not as a replenishment of the local aid account," he said.

One of the 1985 provisions calls for city department heads to submit quarterly spending schedules to the mayor and await approval. Those in charge could suffer stiff penalties, that could be paid out of personal accounts, if money was overspent.

However, the appeals court ruled Friday that retroactive pay is exempt from the nearly 24-year-old law, which a judge quoted in its ruling against the city's argument.

"No personnel expenses earned or accrued, within any department, shall be charged to or paid from such department's ... [quarterly] allotment of a subsequent period without approval by the mayor, except for subsequently determined retroactive compensation adjustments."

Clancy said that all city departments suffered layoffs in Fiscal Year 2004, except for the police department.

"And they sued us," he said.

Lynn Police Association President Sgt. Tim Hallisey and Grunebaum could not be reached for comment Monday.

[Correction: In Monday's story regarding the court ruling in favor of the Lynn Police Association, the ruling was not made in Supreme Judicial Court but rather Superior Court and a judge had not previously ruled in favor of the city. The Item regrets the errors.]

July 2009

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