NEWS

Parental leave exposes City Hall rift

Sharon Coolidge
scoolidge@enquirer.com

Mayor John Cranley unveiled a plan Tuesday that allows city employees to take off up to six paid weeks after the birth of a child, a move that has been widely hailed in other cities, including Dayton just last week.

You'd think it would be good news. Instead, it exposed a behind-the-scenes divide and prompted testy Facebook exchanges between the mayor's staff and Council members Yvette Simpson and Chris Seelbach.

The mayor’s staff said Cranley has been working on the idea – letting employees borrow time against future sick leave to take up to six weeks after a baby is born – since last October and offered screenshots of emails dating back to October 2014 to back up his claim.

Council members Yvette Simpson and Chris Seelbach – Democrats like Cranley – have been publicly been pushing for family leave for employees since spring 2014. No ordinance has been drafted. They did not reach out to the mayor for support.

"New parents shouldn’t have to use sick days in order to spend time bonding with their child or children after birth," Seelbach said. "As a city and country, we should encourage the incredibly important time after childbirth through actual paid parental leave.”

The unveiling Tuesday meant something else to Simpson as well.

“If the mayor was interested, I would have appreciated us working on it together,” Simpson told The Enquirer Tuesday. “It doesn’t seem it happened. It is not about credit, it’s about respect. We’re all professionals. To specifically exclude us is just disrespectful.”

Later she had this exchange on Facebook with Jay Kincaid, the mayor's chief of staff:

Kincaid: "Virtually every week since taking office, Council Member Simpson has been invited to meet with Mayor Cranley. She has declined every single weekly invitation. Additionally, she has cancelled multiple lunch appointments with the Mayor in recent months. If Council Member Simpson feels like she isn't getting the level of attention she desires, actually accepting offers to meet with the Mayor would be a good start towards addressing her concerns."

Simpson: "Let's start by telling the truth. The Mayor invited me to lunch and has cancelled twice, I canceled once. I have been told from insiders that he has met with others who he believes are interested in running against him to inquire whether they are indeed running against him in 2017. When I asked the Mayor whether there was anything pressing that we needed to talk about when I needed to cancel (to speak at an Inclusion event) he said No and was not specific about what he wanted to talk about. By the way, if the Mayor wants to respond, I prefer he do it himself, and not have you speak for him. But we should always tell the truth!"

Cranley said paid parental leave is a major policy issue that affects the lives of families and that he hoped his new policy would trump pettiness.

"I hope that the policy will get more attention than silly politics," Cranley told The Enquirer. "Childish behavior should not interfere with a policy intended to benefit children and families.

"I am proud that I was able to propose an innovative way to make this happen in a fiscally responsible manner," he added. "And we welcome everybody's support ... I know that several members have been talking about it for a while. Enough talk, let's act."

So what really happened?

The Enquirer first heard about the idea when Kincaid announced his wife was pregnant last fall. He realized men could only take off two days after their child's birth. The mayor's staff said Tuesday they have been working on the issue ever since.

The next mention came at a council meeting. This past spring Simpson and Seelbach, with support from others, asked the administration for a report. In doing so, both spoke during a Council meeting about the importance of family leave.

Council broke for the summer with no official proposals.

On Aug. 5, City Manager Harry Black released a report and recommended no change to the city's policy. Among the reasons: future cost, replacement workers and union contracts.

With summer break ending, Simpson said she reached out to the Human Resources Department Monday to discuss her and Seelbach's plan. She has not heard back.

On Tuesday, Cranley - flanked by Council members Amy Murray and David Mann - rolled out his plan, which will be publicly discussed at Council's Sept. 14 Budget and Finance Committee. Simpson and Seelbach learned about the press conference from a Tweet.

Under the plan, men and women can borrow future sick time, which comes at no extra cost to taxpayers.

"This is what parents need in the beginning," Cranley said. "This works for taxpayers, This works for the people who work for the taxpayers."

Murray and Mann added that research shows parents need time to bond with their children, and the policy makes city government a family-friendly work place which can attract talented workers.

Simpson said Cranley's plan doesn't go far enough. Next Tuesday at Council's meeting of the Human Services, Youth and Arts Committee, which Simpson oversees, she will introduce a proposal allowing employees to take six weeks of paid leave without requiring employees to borrow from their own future time off.

“The reality is we have a lot of employees who have to make the choice between having a baby and getting sick,” Simpson said. “They have to use days taking care of parents or because they are sick, and then they can’t take time to bond with their child. It’s not a choice they should have to make.”

She did not have a cost estimate. The City Manager's report said the cost could be "significant over the life of the policy."

Cranley called for Simpson to "find out the cost and tell us what you'll cut."

"What will she cut?" He asked. "Firefighters? Cops? The streetcar?"

"Six weeks of leave without cost to taxpayers strikes me as the best way to move forward," Cranley said. He'll need five votes in support of his idea. And Simpson does too.

Cincinnati follows Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley announced last week that Dayton will begin offering paid leave as a way to attract and keep young talent. That plan allows employees to use two weeks of sick or vacation time and then gives employees another 28 days off while being paid 70 percent of their salary. The remaining 30 percent can be covered with sick and vacation time.

The City of Cincinnati employs more than 6,000 full-time and part-time employees, 35 percent of them women, according to the city manager’s report. Over 57 percent of the city's full time employees are part of Generation X and Generation Y, which the report theorizes would be more likely to have children.