Mayor Mike Bell -- the lone big-city Ohio mayor to support state Issue 2, which would restrict the power of public employee unions -- supported the idea of negotiated minimum staffing levels for firefighters when he was Toledo's fire chief.

Now, times are different, Mr. Bell says, contending that the city cannot afford the overtime it has to pay to keep a minimum number of firefighters on the job.

In the final months of his job as fire chief, Mr. Bell said Toledo's crews arrived at a fire in 6 minutes or less. "You can reduce a lot of things if your expectations are reduced," he said in 2007. "If you are prepared not to see a fire truck for 10 minutes, we can get by with fewer people."

And in March, 2010, the mayor signed an agreement with the firefighters' rank-and-file union, saying the city "recognizes and appreciates the courageous service of firefighters in the face of low manpower and the need to maintain 103" on-duty firefighters at all times.

Fast-forward to February, 2011: The mayor's top administrator -- Steve Herwat, deputy mayor of operations -- gave testimony in Columbus before an Ohio Senate committee that prompted the bill's sponsor, Sen. Shannon Jones (R., Springboro), to add a provision on minimum staffing.

"Senator Jones has referenced that was a reason for adding it," said Jason Mauk, spokesman for Building a Better Ohio, the campaign supporting Issue 2. "[Mr. Herwat] came down and testified about the fire department minimum staffing, and he was one of many officials who argued that minimum staffing is just another way of protecting overtime abuse."

Mr. Bell says he still "absolutely" supports the 103 number, but only if firefighters do -- meaning that if a lot of them call off sick on, say a single day or weekend, he thinks the city should not have to recall off-duty firefighters on overtime to cover those shifts.

"I do think administrations have the right to control staffing levels," Mr. Bell said. "The question is, why should the citizens be held hostage if the firefighters choose to come to work and we still have to be able to put 103 people in stations, because that would mean that not only is that citizen paying for the firefighter who chooses not to come to work but also paying for the firefighter who comes in to replace the firefighter who did not come in?"

Overtime costs

Fire department staffing is an expensive problem for the mayor, who is responsible for preparing a balanced city budget each year.

The city's fire department used all its overtime budget and more this year by August, spending $3.9 million. And last month, city finance officials predicted the fire department would burn through an additional $1.2 million in overtime by year's end -- because of the minimum staffing clause in the city's labor contract with its firefighters' union.

Despite critics among the city union leadership who have called him a flip-flopper, Mr. Bell said he is not. Maintaining the 103 number is still about safety but also realizing that "no one works for free," the mayor said.

Currently, minimum staffing requirements and restrictions on outside contracting can be part of negotiations between unions and public employers, but Senate Bill 5 would prohibit police and firefighters from negotiating how many workers must be on a shift. Also, Ohio teachers would not be able to argue for a maximum number of students in the classroom. The law states that a collective-bargaining agreement cannot include provisions that would keep a municipality or school district from using private contractors to replace work done by union workers.

In addition, Senate Bill 5 -- if voters decide to uphold the law on Nov. 8 with a yes vote on Issue 2 -- would be a drastic game changer for public-sector unions. The law strips away the right to strike, connects salaries and layoff decisions to performance, ends the practice of local governments paying the employee share of pension payments, and increases medical-coverage payments for many workers.

Response time

Toledo's Fire Department still has a 6-minute response time. The National Fire Protection Association says departments should get to a fire within 6 minutes 90 percent of the time.

Dan Desmond, vice president of Toledo Firefighters Local 92, said the city will take advantage of Senate Bill 5 and remove the 103 requirement from its next contract if Issue 2 is approved. The contract expires Dec. 31, but talks for a new pact have not begun.

"It all comes down to safety," Mr. Desmond said. "When staffing levels get dangerously low, it may save budget, but it may cost lives. We are accredited as far as our fire department is concerned and if staffing levels go down, response times go up."

Fire runs peaked at 9,247 in 1976 and fell to 6,812 in 2009. But emergency medical service runs have more than quadrupled since 1970. Ten years ago, 530 uniformed firefighters responded to 8,498 fires and 37,857 EMS calls. Last year, the fire department had 482 uniformed firefighters who responded to 7,076 fire runs in addition to 44,984 EMS runs.

The Toledo Police Department does not have a minimum staffing clause. Police Chief Derrick Diggs said the department's year-to-date response time average for top-priority calls is 6 minutes, 52 seconds -- a number that has fluctuated only slightly over the past decade even though the department had 549 officers as of last week. On Dec. 31, 1987, it had 743 officers, on that date in 1990 it had 704; 709 in 2000, 686 in 2005, and 599 on the last day of last year.

But the unchanged response times with lower manpower could be related to the 16 percent decline in police calls over a decade. In 2001, there were 476,860 calls to 911 and 116,114 nonemergency calls. Last year, there were 409,509 to 911 and 88,104 nonemergency calls.

The battle

Ultimately, the staffing issue has provided ammunition for a union-backed, anti-Issue 2 campaign. It has been highlighted in multiple television and Internet commercials, with claims that response times for police and fire will climb, school class sizes will increase, and hospitals will run with fewer nurses if Senate Bill 5 stands as state law.

Melissa Fazekas, spokesman for We Are Ohio, the campaign fighting Issue 2, said public-sector employees should have the right to bargain for staff sizes.

"When you are talking about firefighters, police, and nurses, there is a direct link between staffing levels and the safety of not only the professionals doing the job, but also the people they are trying to serve," Ms. Fazekas said. "Class size is something that not only teachers but also parents are really concerned about and the type of learning environment there would be if there were 50 students in a classroom, so teachers should be able to say that size does not work."

Mr. Mauk of Building a Better Ohio, the campaign in favor of Issue 2, said the opposition is spreading malarkey and twisting the facts.

"Less than 5 percent of state contracts have any kind of minimum manning and it's higher for police and fire contracts -- less than 12 percent," Mr. Mauk said. "The point here overall is, this issue might poll well, and it might be popular with a focus group, but it does not have the impact on public safety that the opponents say it will."

He said recent arbitration rulings almost universally dismiss demands by the unions for minimum staffing.

"Staffing decisions have traditionally been considered a management right and our position is those positions are best made by police chiefs, commanders, and fire chiefs," Mr. Mauk said. "And less than 5 percent of the Ohio nursing work force are considered government employees and most don't work in hospitals, so their ad is a scare tactic."

Teachers and nurses

Union leaders such as Kevin Dalton, president of the Toledo Public Schools' teachers union, and Tom Kosek, a registered nurse and president of the nurses' union at the University of Toledo Medical Center, the former Medical College of Ohio, both say those so-called scare-tactic scenarios will become reality if Issue 2 passes.

Mr. Kosek acknowledges his contract has no minimum staffing levels. The fight is not about that for him.

"This is the interesting caveat. Management has the obligation to create reasonable work rules, which would include creating a rule that says you can take care of 'X' number of patients," he said.

"Another part of Senate Bill 5 takes away the right to grieve for just cause. … Although contracts don't say, 'this is the staffing level,' I have the right as a union member to grieve an unreasonable work rule, and that is the part that everyone is missing."

The number of nurses working at UTMC is up the past several years, Mr. Kosek said.

The nurse-to-patient ratio depends on the unit. For example, in intensive care, it is one nurse for every patient, but other nurses can have six patients. In trauma situations, the ratio flips and there are sometimes three nurses for a single patient.

"Business interests don't always coincide with the interest of patient safety and public safety," he said. "If it did, it would be easy. The thought of generating more revenue clouds judgment."

Mr. Dalton of the Toledo Federation of Teachers said the same clouds will dim the minds of top school officials if they are given carte blanche regarding class sizes.

"If they come in and say it will be 45 students per class, that is what we are stuck with," he said. "We have had to bargain for smaller classes, and many times that is achieved by sacrificing other areas."

TPS class sizes are contractually mandated to be an average of 25 in kindergarten and 29 in grades one through eight. Class sizes at the high school level are dictated by the subject.

"Even this school year we had many classes that were considered overloaded," Mr. Dalton said. "It saves them money. They can put more students in with one teacher. In Detroit, many [classes] are 1-to-50 and they take two classes of 25 students and combine them so they can get rid of one teacher."

Jim Gault, TPS chief academic officer, said district leaders are committed to keeping class sizes as low as possible and they've had no discussions about using Senate Bill 5 to jam more kids into classrooms. "It will obviously be within our budget and what we can afford," Mr. Gault said. "Going though negotiations we had a large concessionary package taken by employees and our class sizes are relatively unchanged this year."

TPS employees this year took a 2.5 percent pay cut and tripled their medical-coverage costs.

Contact Ignazio Messina at: imessina@theblade.com or 419-724-6171.

First Published October 30, 2011, 4:12 a.m.