When former Fresno County Lincoln Club Board Member and current City Council member Lee Brand was elected to office in 2008, he didn’t wait long to make an impact on how the city does its business. First, Mr. Brand wrote the Better Business Act, adopted by the Council in 2009, it effectively ended city financed boondoggles by revising and revamping the process by which Fresno can enter into a partnership with a private developer.
But Brand wasn’t done there. This week, the Council will vote on the Labor Management Act, a groundbreaking outline that will govern the rules for how the city negotiates all future agreements with the public employee unions. You can read the Fresno Bee’s endorsement of the Act here and I’ve uploaded an Executive Summary as part of this post.
A significant impetus behind Brand’s effort is the presence of "no layoff" clauses in most of the labor agreements. The Labor Management Act bans these in the future. Of course, all the unions hate that there will be sunshine on future negotiations. And this act is now being viewed as a national model for reform of the negotiating process.
Kudos to Councilmember Lee Brand – making an authentic, measurable difference in the City of Fresno.