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New Castle County Council passes COVID-19 hazard pay, rejects proposal to shift funds from police

New Castle County Council meets over Zoom Tuesday

In its first meeting after summer break, New Castle County Council rejected a proposal to move the better part of a million dollars from the police department to community services.  

The proposalby Councilmen Jea Street and Penrose Hollins would have taken $882,688 allocated to several vacant county police department positions and moved the money to the Department of Community Services to support “community initiatives and racial justice.”

“The ordinance is really about constitutional racism and the [killing] of Black men by white police,” said Hollins during Tuesday’s meeting. 

County Chief Financial Officer Michael Smithsaid earlier this month the funding for the vacant positions is currently being used to pay a class of cadets in the police academy. He added the police department regularly uses its entire salary budget, despite attrition and vacancies, to pay for overtime—and if the ordinance passed, County government would have had to find funding elsewhere to make up the difference. He said that could mean tapping into the tax stabilization fund or instituting a hiring freeze on other departments. 

Council overwhelmingly rejected the proposal Tuesday night. 

At the Finance Committee meeting earlier that day, Councilman Dave Carter argued police services need to be expanded in the fast-growing southern parts of the County. 

“I really felt the last two weeks, we need the help down here,” said Carter. “But we do need to change our policing. We just need a more thoughtful plan of how we’re going to do that.”

The failed proposal would not have permanently slashed police positions. It also did not specify exactly what programming the transferred funds would support. 

Councilman Street said the goal was sending a message about police brutality against Black Americans. He has said the proposal was not about “defunding the police,” although it came as activists across the country called for a redirection of resources away from police and toward preventative public safety solutions.

Councilwoman Dee Durham was the only council member to join Hollins and Street in supporting the measure. 

“I would prefer to see a move in the direction of prevention, whether it’s through community services or … even within the police department—a new program maybe set up there,” Durham said. 

“It really does bother me,” she added, “how these vacant positions carry on and that money for those vacant positions is used for overtime, because that is not a transparent way to do budgeting. It’s just not right in my mind.”

New Castle County Council also chipped away at the County’s pot of CARES Act funding Tuesday night. 

Council voted to direct $5 million of the federal coronavirus relief funds toward hazard pay for government employees. 

The plan to reimburse local governments for necessary COVID-related payroll expenses not covered in this year’s budget replaces an earlier “hero’s pay” proposal from the County Executive that saw pushback this spring. 

County Executive Matt Meyer’s April proposal would have given $10,000 to active first responders working during the pandemic, including all full-time first responders employed by the County and its municipalities, as well as full-time career first responders employed by fire companies. Council cut mention of Hero’s Pay from a CARES Act appropriation ordinance in May. 

County Council President Karen Hartley-Nagle sponsored the new measure.

“This is not Hero’s Pay,” she said Tuesday. “It is not a bonus. There are benchmarks that have to be met to qualify. The best analogy I can make would probably be overtime pay: if you work it, you get paid for it.”

According to the state Department of Justice, the U.S. Treasury does not allow CARES Act money to be spent on bonuses. Eligible hazard pay must be additional pay for COVID-related hazardous duties or work involving physical hardship. 

Several members of Council complained Hartley-Nagle’s ordinance is unclear about how many and what types of workers can qualify.

But Councilman Dave Carter said with hundreds of millions in CARES Act funding left to spend before the end of the year, Council shouldn’t dismiss the proposal outright.  

It passed with eight votes in favor and five against. 

 

Sophia Schmidt is a Delaware native. She comes to Delaware Public Media from NPR’s Weekend Edition in Washington, DC, where she produced arts, politics, science and culture interviews. She previously wrote about education and environment for The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, MA. She graduated from Williams College, where she studied environmental policy and biology, and covered environmental events and local renewable energy for the college paper.
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