By Sharon Coolidge
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Residency rules

A survey of police agencies shows they have different residency requirements: Cincinnati Police Department officers must live in Hamilton County. Warren County sheriff's deputies must live within 30 minutes of the sheriff's office. With some exceptions, Butler County sheriff's deputies must live in Butler County. Clermont County sheriff's deputies have no residency requirement.

Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis wants deputies to live in the county.

He's so adamant about it, he took them to court Friday.

In last year's contract negotiations with patrol deputies and their supervisors, an arbitrator ruled that deputies could live outside the county - reversing a long-time sheriff's office policy requiring all employees to live in the county.

Leis is accusing the arbitrator of favoritism, saying she acted improperly. He is challenging the ruling that affects almost 300 deputies and supervisors.

An attorney representing the deputies' union and an assistant county prosecutor, representing Leis, argued that issue in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court on Friday along with a disagreement over how deputies are paid for special-duty work.

Judge Norbert Nadel asked both sides to submit their arguments in writing by Feb. 13 and said he'll make a decision after that.

"We rarely see these issues come to court," said John Mahoney, deputy director of the Ohio Municipal League.

Usually residency is not a matter of collective bargaining, he said, adding that only about half of the state's 251 cities and 13 of its 700 villages have residency requirements for public employees.

Those who favor residency requirements say they keep a healthy middle-class population and give employees - particularly police and firefighters - a greater sense of investment in the community they serve, Mahoney said.

The argument against it, he said, boils down to employees believing their workplace cannot tell them where to live.

Anyone accepting a job at the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office agrees to live in the county, said Steve Barnett, a sheriff's office spokesman.

Leis would not comment.

Contract negotiations between the Fraternal Order of Police on behalf of Hamilton County sheriff's deputies and Leis started in mid-2002 and weren't completed when the contract expired at the end of 2002.

Of 35 provisions, the sheriff and the union could not agree on 10 issues, so the contract went to arbitration, both sides agreeing on Janet Goulet, a retired economics professor, as arbitrator. She was then appointed by the state.

On June 28, Goulet ruled deputies could live outside the county within limits.

E-mail scoolidge@enquirer.com