County and Sheriff gearing up for negotiations with union

County leaders and Sheriff Richard Wiles are gearing up for another round of negotiations with the Sheriff’s Officers Association.

Commissioners Monday voted to hire Ric Navarro for legal services.

Navarro will be the “lead negotiator for the Sheriff in the upcoming negotiations with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Officers’ Association to renew the collective bargaining agreement with the Sheriff for the upcoming four year term of office,” according to the commissioners court agenda.

Precinct 1 Commissioner Carlos Leon (D) was not present for the vote. This contract is described as dealing with seniority, promotions, training, and internal affairs, as opposed to the contract with commissioners which deals with pay, benefits, days off and compensation in general.

This particular contract is re-negotiated every four years, and is set to expire Dec. 31, 2016. The Sheriff and commissioners want to start negotiations quickly, so a new one can be in place by Jan. 1 for the new term of office.

Commissioners also hope some of the lingering issues brought up during the election cycle will be put to rest.

“Now that the Sheriff has won reelection, the Sheriff will now be able to negotiate some of those operational changes, possibly some of those changes that they’ve grieved about in the past. And that will happen effective immediately.”

Earlier this year, an independent arbitrator ruled in favor of the association when Wiles replaced certain detention officers at the county jail with civilian employees. The sheriff said the move was meant to save taxpayer money, but the arbitrator ruled he violated the labor deal between his office and the association. The association also supported Tom Buchino, the Republican challenger to Democrat Wiles in the election. Wiles won by a wide margin.

All those outcomes will inform this round of negotiations.

“Communication’s been sparse at best between the department and association,” said Sgt. Robert Hortsman, president of the EPCSOA. “So I’m hoping this will be a catalyst and bridge that gap in communication, and at least bring us to the table together so that we can start looking at some of those issues.”

Both sides coming to the table will be an important step after the election.

“They’ll bring what they want to the table, we’ll bring what we want to the table,” Hortsman said. “And negotiators will look at that, and we’ll see what gets put into the contract, and what the association approves as far as the membership.”

The sheriff’s leadership team is looking to make sure there’s no repeats of what happened after the last round of negotiations, with the example of what happened to their plan to put civilians in some desk positions in the jail as the sharpest example.

“In the end, the decision was based on some previous history,” said EPCSO Assistant Chief Tom Whitten. “Perhaps we overlooked that on our side. We thought we had their approval to move forward. I guess that wasn’t the case, and we’ll ensure that – at least to the best of our ability ensure that nothing like that happens in this contract.”

With that still fresh in the memory, the team for Sheriff Wiles is focused on making sure there are no conflicts between the different kinds of contracts.

“We have no plans to address anything in here that would cross-reference that. You know, if we’re going to address the civilianization issue, we’re going to do it when it comes up.”

The contracts between the union and the Sheriff and the union and commissioners court come up for renegotiation every four years.