While a recent arbitration award finalized the provisions of a contract between the county and its probation officers, the attorney hired to represent the county in the arbitration proceedings voted against it.

Christopher Gabriel said at the Wednesday county commissioners meeting that he voted “no” while the Butler County Probation Officers Association arbitrator and the neutral arbitrator hired to oversee the proceedings voted in favor of it.

Gabriel took to task legislation that he said allows the neutral arbitrator to rule not according to the evidence presented, but based on their concern with being selected again in the future.

He said that situation is causing governments to be shut down or significantly disrupted.

“Anyone who wants to know how governments get themselves into such calamities would find instruction in the job done here by the board of arbitrators,” Gabriel said. “Irresponsibility of this type is the stuff those later crises are made of.”

He said the county's probation officers, while valued and deserving, were already among the highest paid county employees in Pennsylvania before receiving raises in the award.

He added their wage and benefit package “far exceeds” other county employees by comparison.

“These are employees whose base pay exceeds $26 per hour, who have nearly free health insurance, a taxpayer-guaranteed pension plan and who enjoy about a month's paid time off each year,” Gabriel said. “There is no basis in the record presented to (the neutral arbitrator Richard Dissen) that supports the wage and benefit improvements included in this award.”

The award states that probation officers, whose contract with the county expired in 2018, will receive a retroactive 2.5 percent increase for 2019, another 2.5 percent for this year and an increase of 2.75 percent in 2021 and 2022.

The officers now pay 5.5 percent of the monthly premium cost for a flex health care plan and 12 percent for a PPO plan.

In the award, they will pay 7 percent of the health and prescription drug cost for the flex plan and 13 percent for the PPO plan.

The health care provisions are not retroactive for 2019.

In-network deductible will remain at $250 for a single employee and $500 for a family.

In addition to a handful of other provisions, the procedure to file a grievance was revised to provide three steps. Employees must first contact the human resources director, then the commissioners and, finally, the grievance would move to arbitration.

“Because there is no rational basis for this award in the record presented to the neutral arbitrator at the hearing and no legitimate basis from any source that matches the purpose of interest arbitration under the law in any way, I dissent,” Gabriel said.

Eric Stoltenberg, the Pittsburgh attorney hired by the union to serve on the arbitration board, voted in favor of the award along with Dissen.

Stoltenberg disagreed with Gabriel's summation of the award, saying the union conceded that new hires will earn 80 percent of the base pay of an entry-level officer in their first year of employment.

New probation officers will not earn the full base pay rate until they attain 60 months of employment with the county.

“The arbitrator took a very honest look at the collective bargaining unit, the probation officers, which is a very hardworking group, and the factors that they face and made a reasoned and balanced decision based on the economics and other language that was decided,” Stoltenberg said.

He pointed to the wage scale for new hires as a concession made by the union, and called the raises “rational and reasonable.” He added that the officers will pay more for health care in exchange for the raises in the award.

“If you look at the other contracts in the county, (the award is) fairly equivalent,” Stoltenberg said. “This is a very fair arbitration award.”

The commissioners voted unanimously to accept the award, for which they had almost no choice because it came from arbitration.

Like their last contract with the county, the probation officers are the last of the bargaining units to make a deal.

The new contract expires in December 2022.