Houston Firefighter Chris Mixon lights a prescribed burn at the Houston Arboretum & Nature Center in February. The Texas Legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill that would force the city and its firefighters to go to arbitration to settle its long-running contract dispute.
Brett Coomer/Staff photographer
Houston Chronicle
Dylan McGuinness, Staff Writer
The Texas House voted 125-10 on Monday in support of the bill, which now heads to Gov. Greg Abbott's desk for a signature. Barring a veto, the law will take effect immediately upon his signature.
The firefighters' union said on Twitter it expects the law to take effect within 10 days. Nobody in the Harris County delegation opposed the bill, despite City Hall's opposition to the measure.
Under existing state law, the firefighters' union is able to collectively bargain with the city on contracts, but the two sides have not been able to agree on a new one since 2017. They have been locked in a bitter stalemate since, essentially spanning Mayor Sylvester Turner's entire tenure at City Hall, with fights at the ballot box and in court.
State law allows the union to seek remedy in the courts during that kind of impasse, but that has proven to be a lengthy endeavor. After the union sued on those grounds in 2017, the city argued the judicial remedy was unconstitutional, an argument the state Supreme Court dismissed earlier this year, almost six years after the lawsuit was filed.
The newly passed bill requires the two sides to go to binding arbitration, with an eye toward a quicker resolution. Each side would select one arbitrator and then agree on a third, neutral party. The panel would draw up a deal both sides must abide by.
State Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, the bill's primary backer, celebrated the news Monday, as did the firefighters' union. Whitmire is running for mayor and pledged that "help is on the way" for firefighters when he launched his campaign.
"We honored firefighters from across this state and we told them repeatedly, 'We will not forget you.' That is the reason for me bringing Senate Bill 736 to this Senate floor: to tell the Houston firefighters we will not forget them,” Whitmire said.
Marty Lancton, president of the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association Local 341, said the bill will ensure "we never have to endure the treatment we've experienced over the last seven years."
"The time has come to take that dented and rusted can the city has been kicking down the road for years and toss it in the trash," Lancton said. "Our firefighters and their families must not wait any longer."
Turner said the bill would be damaging to the city and difficult to undo now that it will be enshrined in state law. He has opposed arbitration, arguing it takes a key part of the city budget outside of City Hall's discretion. The proposed $594 million allocation for the fire department makes up about a quarter of the city's operating budget in Turner's fiscal 2024 spending proposal, which would begin July 1.
"The binding arbitration bill may play well for some politically, but it will not bode well for Houston and its financial future," Turner said. "At a time when we are trying to eliminate structural financial barriers, this bill imposes another structural barrier."
Fire unions in two other Texas cities, San Antonio and Austin, have won voter approval of charter amendments that make mandatory arbitration possible. The process led to a five-year contract in San Antonio, breaking a similarly long and bitter logjam there. Fitch Ratings downgraded San Antonio's credit rating after the measure passed, citing the unpredictability that binding arbitration could introduce into that city's budget. The deal, though, ultimately was seen as a win for the city, and credit rating agencies viewed it favorably.
Unlike in those cities, Whitmire and the bill's backers say the bill will limit any arbitration deal in Houston to one year. That duration is not included in the bill's language, but they say it stems from the framework in Chapter 174, the part of state law that outlines the negotiating process.
Turner and other city officials have argued the bill differs from those two cities in another substantial way. Those cities included specific parameters that the arbitrators could consider, such as wages, the cost of living and inflation. Whitmire's bill, they say, has no such parameters. The union said those parameters already are included in Chapter 174.
The two sides are in a legal impasse for 2017 wages and benefits. It is unclear, once Abbott signs the bill, if they would start by arbitrating that year first.
Turner circumvented the negotiating process to give firefighters 18-percent raises over three years. His proposed budget for the next fiscal year includes the last phase of those pay increases.
dylan.mcguinness@houstonchronicle.com