Category: PERB News

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Orange County Court: Bargaining Records Subject to Public Records Act

There was an interesting court case last week in Orange County (County) on the issue of whether the County’s bargaining records are subject to a California Public Records Act (CPRA) request. Jon Fleischman, publisher of the widely read FlashReport, had requested that the County release all documents regarding its ongoing negotiations with the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs (Union).  The request asked for all formal and informal offers and counteroffers, including “supposals,” between the County and the Union.

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PERB Issues 2014-15 Annual Report

PERB has released its annual report for fiscal year 2014-2015. (The report is available here.)  Here is my annual summary of the statistics in the report:

Unfair Practice Charges

695 unfair practice charges (UPCs) were filed in fiscal year 2014-15. In fiscal year 2013-2014, there were 949 UPCs, but 173 of those were filed by the same individual on behalf of himself and/or other employees over agency fee issues. So if you subtract the 172 “duplicate” UPCs, there were 777 UPCs filed in fiscal year 2013-14.  That means fiscal year 2014-15 saw a 10.6% decrease in UPCs compared to the year before.

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PERB’s End of Fiscal Year Numbers

Overview: PERB issues 74 decisions

PERB’s annual report is due October 15th. So the report for fiscal year 2014-2015 should be available on PERB’s website any day now. Until then, I have some preliminary numbers based on my tracking of PERB decisions.  Note, there are some missing case numbers in my tracking system and I don’t know if it’s because I missed a case or because PERB skipped some decision numbers. Once the annual report is released I’ll be able to figure out what happened. So with that caveat, my records indicate that PERB issued a total of 74 decisions this past year.  The prior year PERB issued 87 decisions. Again, because I’m not sure if I missed some decisions I can’t be positive that the total number of decisions is lower this year than last year. However, if it is lower this year, it’s not by much.

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COIN v. CRONEY: SB 331 Advances in Legislature

The Birth of COIN

In 2012, the City of Costa Mesa adopted an ordinance aimed at making collective bargaining more transparent. Costa Mesa called its ordinance “Civic Openness in Negotiations” or COIN. Since then several other public agencies have adopted similar COIN ordinances, including Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisades, Fullerton, and Orange County. (Click here for Orange County Register article.) COIN ordinances generally have some or all of these features:

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PERB Advisory Committee Meeting on March 5, 2015

The Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) has announced a meeting of its Advisory Committee for March 5, 2015 at 11 am.  The location will be at the PERB headquarters in Sacramento at 1031 18th Street, First Floor, Room 103, Sacramento, CA. According to the meeting agenda, the Advisory Committee meeting is "an opportunity for the Board, its staff, its constituents and the public to openly discuss the topics outlined below, as well as other topics not listed, relating to PERB’s mission in the administration of the seven collective bargaining statutes over which PERB has jurisdiction."  There is no formal "membership" for the Advisory…

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