7th District Report
 |
| Dave Gillotte |
The 7th District finds itself preparing to add our six members, who died last year in the line of duty to the California Firefighters Memorial Wall this year. We are re-living, to some extent, the Station Fire and the dramatic deaths of our Brothers Ted Hall and Arnie Quinones ... we also lost four others as a result of the hidden dangers of this profession they boldly chose.
Phil Arreguin died of a heart attack in the line of duty and Tonya Burns, Carrie Henger-Neff and Richard Carr lost their battles with occupational cancer. Each of these members will be missed, have served well and will not be forgotten. Each left behind spouses and children, parents and friends, and this should be a reminder of not only how dangerous this job is, but also why we work so hard serving as union leaders.
We are protecting not only the firefighters, paramedics and fire service personnel we represent, but also their families. Let our firefighters not only be remembered, but also let their ultimate sacrifice be a reminder and a motivator to work that much harder through our great unions to protect and enhance our wages, benefits to include healthcare and pensions, and improve and keep as safe as we can our working conditions and staffing. All of these issues dramatically affect the families that are left behind.
On that note, how do we protect our members and their families? We remain vigilant and on guard through political action and legislative efforts to continue to elect those individuals who understand the nature of our occupation and are willing to support our issues in their task of voting and lawmaking.
In California, each and every one of us made a commitment of $8 member/month to fight Meg Whitman and to help elect Jerry Brown as our next governor. Believe me when I tell you, if Meg Whitman is elected, we are in some serious trouble. Her top two priorities are putting all new hire firefighters into a defined contribution, 401(K)-style pension and silencing the very strong voice of our unions through political action.
Jerry Brown gave us all collective bargaining and also signed into law the cancer presumption law we have come to rely on so heavily for our members. He will be the moderate, non-extreme experienced individual that can also, once again, put a surplus of billions back into the state budget like he did his last term. He is not the young brash Jerry of yesterday, but a time-tested, refined leader who will certainly never let firefighters get attacked on our issues.
Los Angeles County Fire Fighters are not only contributing to the effort through the CPF assessment, but we are also directly contributing the max amounts for primary and general election and providing firefighters on the ground and at the phones to help with the effort. We know what's at stake, and we are not taking the task lightly because with Whitman, she will dump multi-millions of dollars of her own money into the campaign to try and win this thing.
Local 1014 members just recently voted on a historic dues increase of almost $23/month for not only the governor's race, but also to prepare for our Board of Supervisors' races in 2014, each of which will be in the millions. This will help us to continue to play at a high level in our local city politics and to continue our long standing tradition of pushing hard at the state level.
We also feel that initiatives will be a large part of our program into the near future -- either sponsoring them to benefit us or battling them, if they seek to attack us. Our dues had not been raised for nearly 20 years and we have gone from 1% of top step firefighter to 1.33% of top step firefighter. We encourage everyone to consider if they are funded properly to do their part in the battle we find ourselves in ... it is critical to the effort.
Los Angeles County Fire Fighters continue to battle the same budget woes, due to austere property tax collections that other unions and departments battle. We continue to push the appropriate use of reserves and advocate responsible budget cutbacks that won't affect staffing to get the math right. There is no running from the math on the loss of revenues, but good political action and relationships with not only elected officials but also the fire chief and/or managers is also very helpful to finding support for protecting that which is so important to our membership. If you don't have these relationships in place, better start heading in that direction and fast. Don't be bullied or give up pay and benefits without doing the math and offering up some alternatives.
The 7th District membership and leadership is also preparing to head to the IAFF Convention in San Diego this month. There are a number of CPF-sponsored resolutions and Local 1014 has crafted two resolutions that deal with the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) that we all pay and "Constructive Receipt" which deals with the tax you have to pay on the value of accrued and banked benefit time when it goes on the books, just as if it was cash in hand as salary ... if you have control of the days to either take them off or choose to get paid for them. These are two very important issues that affect our pocketbooks, and combined with the unwinding of any negative impact of the National Healthcare Reform Bill ... we should be very busy at Convention and hopefully CPF and the 10th District will speak up loudly on our issues.
Keep up the hard work that each and every one of you from each CPF district does day in and day out to protect what we have, and ensure the firefighters of tomorrow have what we have. We are proud to be a part of this great organization, this great team.
As my great friend Dallas Jones used to say to me ... "Rascal, stay the course!" That is exactly what we must do ... slow and strong and unrelenting in our efforts. See you at Convention.