Looking into the Crystal Ball....

Town Manager Steve Ledoux has publicly stated that the union contracts he negotiates with the municipal unions will be "zero cost increase" contracts. This means that the increased cost to the town for all employee expenses will be zero over the next three years.

This doesn't mean that the employees will not get raises. The raises will be modest, but they will be balanced off with changes in the health insurance plans, so that the expensive plans will be phased out and lower-cost plans (HMOs) will be used by all.

For some employees, this will not be a change at all, and they will simply get a raise. For other employees, they will be paid to switch from the indemnity plan to the HMO, or even to drop their insurance coverage altogether (if their spouse has coverage). When you estimate the total savings to the town, it pays for the raises. The bottom line is that labor costs in the municipal budgets should be held flat for the next three years, an excellent result for taxpayers and fair to employees who are not facing layoffs and salary reductions like is being seen in the private sector.

Now it is time to see if our School Committee representatives will follow this good example and negotiate "zero cost increase" contracts with the school unions, the largest of which is the Acton Education Association (AEA), or teacher's union.

Because these negotiations are held behind closed doors, and the School Committee will only release the results after they have been approved, there is little that the public can do but wait and comment after the fact. This is very much like closing the barn door after the horses have escaped.

But there are two things the public can do. First, they can comment now. If they want to see the schools follow the town lead, they should tell our School Committee representatives at apsc@acton-ma.gov.

Second, if the contracts come back with any net increase, we can refuse to fund it. The ultimate funding decision is still Town Meeting's. Only this time, we are all watching what is going on, and we aren't going to be fooled by "sorry, our hands are tied, we are locked into a labor contract," which is the typical response one hears when one tries to reduce proposed school budgets.

If the School Committee decides to give the employees an increase in this economy, then I hope Town Meeting makes them take the money from somewhere else in their budget (and not out of taxpayers' pockets.) Since everyone knows the state of the economy and every School Committee member knows the town's position (not only because Steve Ledoux gets to vote for the contracts by law, but because he has publicly stated the town's position at Town Meeting), the School Committee cannot claim ignorance.

What could a zero-cost-increase contract look like? Here is my "back of the envelope" example.

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Eliminate the "ERI" incentive which costs the town about $1 million per year.

Give Zero COLA raises for the next 3 years.

Let the teachers keep their steps (paid for by ERI elimination).

Reduce health-insurance subidy from 85% to 75%, which will roughly cover the expected 10% annual increase in health-care costs going forward.

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These numbers can obviously be adjusted to make them come out to a "net zero" over the next three years. You could phase out the ERI if the "step" raises are much lower than $1 million per year. You could change the health-insurance subsidy to 70% if health-care costs are expected to increase faster.

Under Massachusetts state law, the schools get to decide how to spend their money. But the taxpayers get to decide how much they get. And this year, we should insist on zero-cost-increase contracts for the next three years, or we should demand that the School Committee fund any increase they decide to give out of the existing budget.