By Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Cincinnati's police union won the latest round Wednesday in its battle with the city - and voters - over how assistant police chiefs should be hired.

An arbitrator, in an opinion disseminated Wednesday at City Hall, ruled that the negotiated contract for the Fraternal Order of Police supersedes voter passage of Issue 5. That was a civil-service reform measure approved in November 2001 that allowed the city to go outside to hire chiefs and assistant chiefs and removed those positions from civil-service protection.

Proponents sold the measure, on the ballot seven months after the April 2001 riots, as a way to change the culture of the police department by starting at the top.

It became an issue again in December, when council voted to reject the police supervisors' contract. They said the contract violated the will of the voters in Issue 5 because it didn't allow assistant chiefs to be fired without going through an arbitration process like other officers.

That vote led to the arbitration, and arbitrator Michael Paolucci's decision.

FOP vice president Keith Fangman said Wednesday the arbitrator's decision was binding and that supervisors expect their retroactive pay "post-haste."

"This is a major victory for our membership and a humiliating defeat for (councilman) Pat DeWine,'' he said. "Unfortunately for Mr. DeWine, the City Council agreed to enter into binding arbitration. A quick vocabulary lesson for Mr. DeWine is 'binding' means final, the end, finished."

Not so fast, DeWine said.

"This is obviously a finger in the eye of the voters who passed it," he said. "What this arbitrator says is it doesn't matter what the voters say."

He said he'd urge the city to consider legal options for continuing to fight the decision.

Mayor Charlie Luken, who didn't want council to reject the contract, said he hoped the council members who voted to do so would learn to "accept reasonable advice" next time and leave the contract negotiating to the city manager.

"So what we got," he said, "is $150,000 more (to pay) and some bad feelings with the police."

He said he was delighted to "finally be able to give them their money."

The new deal will actually cost the city $185,000 more - $30,000 in legal fees, $5,000 to the arbitrator and $150,000 for the pay increases.

Supervisors make up about a quarter of the 1,050-member force.

E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com