Syracuse, N.Y. — The city of Syracuse has abruptly halted years of legal efforts that tried to gain more power over police and firefighter discipline.
Days before the state’s highest court was scheduled to hear arguments, the city and its public safety unions agreed to withdraw legal cases regarding the role of outside arbitration in the discipline process.
Instead, the city and its police union have agreed to changes in how arbitration works, while a state law passed in 2022 essentially settled the legal dispute with the firefighter union.
It’s a stark reversal from the stance Mayor Ben Walsh’s administration took in 2019, when the corporation counsel’s office notified the unions of changes coming to the discipline process. The plan was for the mayor to appoint a hearing officer to make final rules on disputes with hearings to be held in public, unlike the more secretive arbitration process.
The city’s actions stemmed from a 2017 ruling involving the city of Schenectady by the state Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. In that case, the judges found that an early 20th century state law put final discipline decisions in the hands of public safety department heads in a group of cities that included Syracuse.
City attorneys cited that ruling in declaring that the arbitration process in police and fire contracts was not lawful. The unions disagreed and litigation began in 2019.
Lawsuits have centered on the question of whether the discipline process for those public safety employees should be negotiated as part of labor contracts. The past practice for decades was to include that in collective bargaining. As a result, both unions had secured the right to challenge disciplinary actions through an independent arbitration process.
Lower court rulings favored the unions. Those judges determined that for Syracuse, the city’s 1960 charter overruled the state’s Second Class Cities Law, which was enacted in 1906. The charter said that employee…
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