Tulsa World: Take-home police vehicle policy violates Tulsa ordinance

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Take-home police vehicle policy violates Tulsa ordinance

A Tulsa police car sits outside the Tulsa Medical Examiner's office after a shooting scare in July. STEPHEN PINGRY/Tulsa World File

By BRIAN BARBER World Staff Writer
Published: 11/17/2009 5:41 PM
Last Modified: 11/17/2009 5:41 PM

Tulsa’s police take-home vehicle policy, which allows officers to drive their patrol cars to residences outside the city limits, violates a city ordinance, the City Council learned Tuesday.

What will be done with the information provided by council attorney Drew Rees, however, remains to be seen.

The provision is written into the city’s labor contract with Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 93 and has been a source of recent debate in light of the budget cuts that prompted officer layoffs, grounding the police helicopters and disbanding the mounted patrol.

Councilor Bill Martinson said it appears that the ordinance governing city take-home vehicles, approved by the council and signed by the mayor in 2007, “isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”

“I guess the laws apply to everyone but the FOP,” he quipped during the council’s weekly committee meetings.

Two years ago, the council enacted an all-encompassing ordinance that limited which city employees are assigned take-home vehicles.

Part of the motivation was the revelation that of the Police Department’s 777 vehicles, 392 are driven to homes outside Tulsa.

The ordinance specifically states that marked patrol cars can be driven home by officers only if they are parked in plain view within the city limits.

It further states that city-owned vehicles cannot be used for an employee’s regular commute to and from work from another city.

A temporary exception was granted to the police force because of the union contract that was in place at the time. But that exception was valid only until June 30, 2008.

Martinson, who lost his re-election bid this year, in part because his challenge of the size of the city’s public safety budgets drew the ire of the unions, said he wanted this fact on the record.

“We’ve heard repeatedly that the FOP refuses to give up that portion of its collective-bargaining agreement, and that portion, if Drew Rees is right, is illegal,” he said.

The city administration has said taking the vehicles away from the officers who live out of town would save about $1.1 million. The union contends that the savings would be much less.

But whatever the savings would be, Martinson said, the city is in a financial crisis and needs all it can get.

“I’m tired of hearing they won’t give it up when it’s something they are not entitled to,” he said.

Officers are being allowed to drive their vehicles within 25 miles of 41st Street and Yale Avenue, which is considered the geographic center of the city.

That enables some to drive as far as Owasso, Broken Arrow, Kellyville, Jenks, Claremore and other cities. Enforcement of the radius has been cited by city officials as lax.

This benefit was negotiated with the union in 2005 by then-Mayor Bill LaFortune, who offered it in a year when there were little to no raises.

FOP President Phil Evans refused to discuss union contract specifics with the press, saying he is barred from doing so.

But he said the collective-bargaining agreement is negotiated in good faith between union and city attorneys and that it follows state laws, which supersede any conflicting city ordinances. He said he was not aware of the 2007 ordinance.

Rees told the council that his research shows that many states have laws indicating that if a municipal ordinance conflicts with a collective-bargaining agreement, the agreement overrides.

“Oklahoma, so far as I can find, does not have such a condition,” he said. “That absence, I believe, is significant.”

Absent any compelling law or case law that says otherwise, Rees said, “I believe our city ordinance is valid and should be enforced.”

An independent arbitrator in the police contract process has before determined that the city failed to prove that cost or public policy factors would warrant taking away the benefit.

But minutes from the last arbitration show that the legality of the take-home car provision was not brought up, Rees said.

Earlier this month, the union announced that it would make no further concessions through its contract as a means of cutting the Police Department’s budget.

This came after public appeals from some councilors for the union to give up the out-of-town take-home cars.

Police had already agreed to take eight unpaid furlough days this fiscal year along with the rest of the city’s workforce.

By BRIAN BARBER World Staff Writer

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Reader comments for this story have been moved to the most updated version of the story, now under the headline "Police policy violates statute," which was published on 11/18/2009. So far, 150 comments have been made.