If 6 was 9

Fall River Mayor Flanagan:
 City working on revised local hiring law

Fall River Mayor Will Flanagan, shown here with Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Chairman Cedric Cromwell, says the city is working on a revised version of the responsible employer ordinance.

(Actually, it's a handshake agreeing to screw the taxpayers of Fall River to ensure their own future's!)

By Michael Holtzman
Herald News Staff Reporter
Posted Sep 19, 2010 @ 08:48 PM
Last update Sep 19, 2010 @ 10:02 PM


FALL RIVER — Mayor Will Flanagan, called out by several city councilors over the controversial Responsible Employee Ordinance, said he supports such a provision and has his law department working on a revised version.

“I would have rather seen the ordinance reworked than repealed,” Flanagan said Thursday, two days after the City Council removed it.


Noting the lawsuit filed in June that followed its initial passage, Flanagan said, “I believe we had time to rewrite the ordinance before we went back into court.”


That was in reference to the suit filed by the Utility Contractors Association of New England Inc., alleging four sections of the enacted ordinance violated federal and state constitutions.

“We’re researching in the law department what’s considered a reasonable approach,” Flanagan said of the REO in general and specifically its controversial apprenticeship hiring standards.

“I think we can get it out by the next court date,” Flanagan said. “We will put it before the council.”


Councilor Eric Poulin and others urged him to do that.


The contractors group claimed the ordinance's residency requirements for hiring were illegal. The organization's lawyer, Richard Wayne of Boston, called apprenticeship requirements that contractors have approved training programs in place for several years in order to bid “pretty onerous.”


As a result, the city’s law department agreed to suspend enforcement of the ordinance until Wayne filed a court request for summary judgment. That was expected sometime in October.

Similar ordinances, adopted by about 18 larger cities and towns in Massachusetts, govern requirements for unionized and open shops that bid on municipal projects.


Flanagan said he supports local hiring laws in general and some conditions in the now-repealed ordinance.


He said any employer knowingly allowing illegal, undocumented workers “should be prohibited from future work. It is illegal. It should be part of the ordinance,” he said.


He cited the city’s 14 percent unemployment rate and union halls with sometimes half its members out of work. He said he indicated in meetings with union and open shop leaders his support for a “local hiring preference.”


The residency requirements, targeted in the lawsuit, are “a gray area,” Flanagan said.


He supports paying prevailing wages — which state laws mandate on public jobs — and providing benefits like health insurance.


While medical benefits can vary widely, especially between union and open shops, Flanagan said he supports how that part of the ordinance was written.

“I support a reasonable apprentice program,” Flanagan said.


His assistant corporation counsel, Elizabeth Pereira, called it “a huge issue that’s been difficult” to resolve. Union and open shops have widely different preferences on graduate training programs, maintaining them and meeting quotas.

Pereira, assigned to the research after the contractors filed suit, said she’s been working with Corporation Counsel Steven Torres “to try to figure out some way to word it so it’s in conformance with case law... “We were hoping to have something by the beginning of September, but it didn’t happen,” she said. “Steve and I began working on it, and it got to a stumbling block when we got to the apprenticeship issue.”


Pereira said they are ready to proceed. The City Council repealed the ordinance rather than referring what had originally been passed to its Committee on Ordinances and Legislation for revision.


“It really didn’t make too much of a difference as far as we’re concerned,” she said. “The REO enforcement was suspended. To us, it was if it was off the books.”


Now that it’s repealed, she said Utility Contractors may seek reimbursement for attorney’s fees.


Flanagan said they’d dispute such pursuit of damages because the ordinance was embargoed then repealed.
“I’m not the authority that proposed the ordinance,” Flanagan said of the 8-0 council vote to pass it after Torres finalized the law union leaders gave the council.

“Attorney Torres to this day says he thinks it’s defensible. We haven’t changed our position,” Flanagan said.


Despite claims to the contrary by some councilors, he said he did not directly or indirectly support repeal of the ordinance.


An issue Pereira said needs further clarification is whether the city’s original and more limited REO, enacted in 2000, remains in effect.

“The old ordinance is essentially stricken,” she said, citing the new REO language.


City Clerk Alison Brett and City Council President Joseph Camara said the night of the repeal the old one remained on the books. Pereira said Brett had contacted her saying that was the council’s intent.


She planned to research the council action and give Brett an opinion.
E-mail Michael Holtzman at mholtzman@heraldnews.com.


"Ok, so a guy goes into a bar and sees a turtle, a chicken and a lawyer drinking burbon, and he askes the bartender "Hey, what's going on with those three?" and the bartender says........"

Nothing this crook says or does can possibly be taken at face value. He's not smart enough to bring about real, positive change in Fall River, but he's just devious enough to be dangerous to your financial well being and your standard of living in Fall River. And then there is that ever present nagging question of "What's in this for him?"

You naturally have to extend the beneficiaries of that query to include his pals Torres and Fiola, as well as his biggest campaign contributors and his fellow members of the FROED Board of Directors. You might also want to include the Chamber of Commerce. Oh yes, and anyone publishing a newspaper in the City and those painting newspaper boxes (HA!). Newspaper boxes! HAHAHAHA! PAINT A NEWSPAPER BOX AND CHANGE THE DIRECTION OF FALL RIVER ! I haven't stopped laughing since I first read that happy horse twaddle!

So, from what I gather, the City Council, riding the expected crest of a populace anger wave, set about trying to solve the city's unemployment problem by trying to mandate, quite illegally, that city people be hired , in exorbitantly high numbers, as trade apprentices and employees on construction crews in order for firms to be eligible to be awarded a city contract. And when an attorney, a very expensive and far more qualified attorney than our CRACK , home grown city legal team, representing Utility Contractors Association of New England Inc., filed suit against the city, the City Council reacted by killing the ordinance they had passed, but left the framework of an earlier attempt in place, primarily, I think, to allow them all to say they are tough on construction firms trying to win city contracts by mandating Fall River labor be used. There is more useless posturing going on right now than in an episode of America's Next Top Model.

And then came Sylvanagan. This fool wants it every which way that will make him look good. But the entire discussion, from his vantage point, is entirely devoid of what is right or wrong, what is appropriate to reach a valid social goal, or what actually is allowable under both state and federal constitutions. I guess that's why we must rely on Atty. Richard Wayne representing the Utility Contractor's. I guess that's also why Atty. Wayne's clients want legal fees paid by the City of Fall River in the event the Judge sides with the Utility Contractor's in a possible summary judgement. The way Sylvanagan claims we shouldn't have to pay makes me feel we is doomed. It's an all too frequent feeling whenever he tries to justify how Fall River DIDN'T screw something up!

" Flanagan said they’d dispute such pursuit of damages because the ordinance was embargoed then repealed.

“I’m not the authority that proposed the ordinance,” Flanagan said of the 8-0 council vote to pass it after Torres finalized the law union leaders gave the council.

“Attorney Torres to this day says he thinks it’s defensible. We haven’t changed our position,” Flanagan said. "

But what is really so "Sylvanagan" about the entire mess is this little bon mot:

" Pereira, assigned to the research after the contractors filed suit, said she’s been working with Corporation Counsel Steven Torres “to try to figure out some way to word it so it’s in conformance with case law... “We were hoping to have something by the beginning of September, but it didn’t happen,” she said. “Steve and I began working on it, and it got to a stumbling block when we got to the apprenticeship issue.”

You have to love the thinking here, and the fact that it's discussed openly, like someone waving the stupid flag for all the world to see.  "We're trying to jury rig an ordinance around known case law AFTER THE FACT because we were too dumb to do it at the beginning!" I mean, is this what passes for adequate preparation and solid legal reasoning in Fall River? No wonder that Atty. Wayne reportedly called home and told the old wifey to order steak that night after he met with his clients from Utility Contractor's. YOU CAN"T MAKE THIS STUFF UP!

Not smart enough to bring about positive change, but just devious enough to get the entire City of Fall River into financial hock while trying to feather his own nest by any tortured reasoning of his own. Sometimes the most direct way is the best way.

" ...Well buddy, you see the Turtle drinks bourbon because he's a slow walking coward who hides from trouble, and the Chicken drinks bourbon because he's terrified of crossing the street to get to the other side in all that traffic....But the Lawyer drinks bourbon with the other two because he's setting up his new client the Chicken to get hit by a taxi during rush hour while he's still in the crosswalk and wants the turtle to be a witness on the sidewalk before he calls the ambulance"..