Union spent most money on campaign mailer supporting councilman
Dion Bracco
Gilroy – The local fire union spent $5,357 in the November council race to support two candidates who pledged to protect binding arbitration, the union’s strongest bargaining chip in labor negotiations.
According to campaign finance records filed this week, the Gilroy Fire Fighters Political Action Committee spent the bulk of the money – $3,942 – on a campaign mailer supporting Dion Bracco, a tow-truck company owner who won the second largest number of votes in the election. The remaining $1,415 financed a joint mailer that included Bracco and Craig Gartman, who cruised to a second term on council as the top vote-getter.
Both councilmen received the fire union’s endorsement in mid-October, just weeks before the Nov. 8 election.
The joint mailer pictured a group of firefighters on one side and Bracco and Gartman on the reverse. The second mailer dedicated to Bracco included a picture of a firefighter running out of a burning house, according to the newly elected councilman.
“I think the mailers have a significant influence on the election,” said Jim Buessing, a fire union official and treasurer for the firefighter’s PAC. “Before, we always gave an opinion in the paper, but it doesn’t reach everybody. In the past two elections, we decided to do something extra with the mailers, which reach more people and let them know who the local firefighters are endorsing.”
He said the group spent more money on Bracco, who lost a 2003 bid for council by just 70 votes, since he was the newcomer.
“They didn’t mention that they were going to spend money on mailers,” Bracco said. “But I was happy to see it when it came in my mailbox. I’m sure it helped.”
Bracco said that during closed-door endorsement interviews with the union, he did not promise to oppose efforts to uproot binding arbitration through a ballot measure. Gartman could not recall if he made such a promise but said the union “knew what my position was all along – that I wouldn’t support a council-led effort to repeal binding arbitration.”
The year-long battle over the issue began early in 2005, after Fire Local #2805 and city negotiators reached impasse on a new contract. In the ensuing months, Mayor Al Pinheiro began pushing for a ballot measure to either repeal binding arbitration, first approved by voters in 1988, or to subject arbitrator decisions to voter approval.
In July, council members voted against a measure for outright repeal but supported the “voter model” as a compromise. Such a move would allow council to ask voters to ratify arbitrator rulings when council deems them harmful to the city’s financial health. But support for the proposal withered in the months leading up to the November election, as union employees complained about due process and threatened political retribution.
During a council policy summit last week, Bracco and Gartman helped spike the mayor’s efforts to revive the debate, rejecting either ballot proposal in an informal straw vote.
“Those two gentlemen were on the line on that issue and voted the way they said they would during the endorsement,” Buessing said.
The fire union’s election spending equaled nearly half that of the last-place finisher in the November race. The large amount represents a relatively new phase in the union’s political involvement. For more than a decade, the union typically contributed a few hundred dollars to candidate campaign committees. But in 2003, under the leadership of Buessing, the firefighter’s PAC spent $6,061 in support of four candidates. The funds came from a portion of the annual dues paid by the 36 union members, according to Buessing. He declined to specify the amount contributed by each member, but campaign filings show that last year’s contribution to the PAC totaled $1,020.
While the latest beneficiaries of that spending oppose council-led efforts to uproot binding arbitration, the debate surrounding the dispute-resolution procedure could resurface. An outside arbitrator is now hashing out contract differences between City Hall and Fire Local #2805 for the second time in five years. Gartman has predicted that an arbitrator ruling that forces big cuts in other city services could inspire a resident-led effort to uproot arbitration.
Asked how he would vote if such a measure appeared on the ballot, Gartman said, “I don’t know. The biggest telling factor is going to be what happens in this round of arbitration.”
Campaign spenders
Candidate Amount Spent Vote Total
– Dion Bracco $21,149.21 $,603
– Craig Gartman* $16,464 4,638
– Charles Morales $12,129.93 3,732
– Peter Arellano* $11,952 4,204
– Bob Dillon $11,270.64 3,600
*election winner
