Blunt acting on campaign promises

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Gov. Matt Blunt began making good on campaign pledges on his first full day in office Tuesday, rescinding the collective bargaining rights of thousands of state workers, ordering agencies to make several cost-cutting policy changes and firing more than a dozen upper-level state employees.

Blunt put a halt on the purchase or lease of new cell phones, office space and nonemergency vehicles. He also closed the state's office in Washington, D.C.

Those were among the first pledges Blunt made when he began campaigning for governor a year ago. The 34-year-old Republican was sworn in at noon Monday -- becoming the nation's youngest-serving governor and the first Republican governor to take office with a GOP legislature in Missouri in 84 years.

He declared in his inaugural address that change would begin immediately.

In his previous role as secretary of state, Blunt criticized former Democratic Gov. Bob Holden's June 2001 executive order granting collecting bargaining rights to thousands of state employees and allowing unions to charge bargaining fees to employees who aren't union members.

Blunt fought an administrative rule change allowing the fees, but lost a court battle with a union when a judge ruled last year the secretary of state's office must publish the rule, allowing it to take effect. It was to finally go into effect at the end of this month.

But on Tuesday, Blunt rescinded the executive order and withdrew the new rule. Several state employee bargaining units already have the fees included in contracts negotiated by unions. But Blunt said those contracts have no effect -- an interpretation unions may challenge.

"It's our position that they remain in effect, that they are legally binding contracts until 2006," when they expire, said Evelyn Miks, assistant director for an 11-state region of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

"If we have to pursue litigation, we're prepared to do that," Miks said.

Of Missouri's 61,000 employees, about 25,000 are represented by unions, including 9,000 under contracts calling for bargaining fees to be charged to nonunion members. Those contracts were negotiated by the American Federation union and the Service Employees International Union, and include such benefits as binding arbitration and seniority rights. They cover probation and parole workers, maintenance employees, nurses and other patient care providers.

Grant Williams, president of the service workers' union's St. Louis chapter, said his union would not challenge Blunt's action nor seek to collect the fees.

Unions still can represent government employees under Blunt's policy change, but are no longer required to reach binding contract agreements with the unions through the collective bargaining process.

They're fired

On Friday, Blunt sent letters to eight Natural Resources employees telling them they would not be needed once he took office Monday. Another nine employees spread through the departments of agriculture, economic development, health, and labor and the Office of Administration also received similar dismissals. Their salaries ranged from $27,000 to nearly $91,000.

Blunt has hired people to fill 12 of those jobs, along with three more for other division-level positions, spokesman Spence Jackson said.

"Those dismissals are the sort of thing that's happened in the past when you have a new administration come in," Blunt said.

But the Democrats who helped the late governor Mel Carnahan begin his administration during the last change in party power in 1993 say that's not the way he handled things.

Marc Farinella, Carnahan's first chief of staff, said the governor's office generally didn't worry about the division-level employees, but instead chose department directors and let them determine their staffs. He also said Carnahan did not turn out many people from the same agency at once.