Throwing a flag on paid details

REMEMBER WHEN Ronald Reagan fired the striking air traffic controllers in 1981? How he showed that a politician could stand up to union bullying and win the respect of voters in the process? We may be on the cusp of something equally momentous in Massachusetts. When Governor Deval Patrick announced last week that he would reconsider the practice of using police details at construction sites, he showed that he too may be about to stand up to union clout.

Massachusetts is the only state that generally requires the use of uniformed police officers to control traffic at construction sites. As is obvious to any passerby, officers employed on these police details are often busier talking on their cellphones and chatting with the work crews than controlling traffic. And at many sites, they may as well ignore the traffic, since there isn't much traffic to control. Indeed, police details pop up in all sorts of places where there is nothing for them to do. I once attended a VFW-sponsored Motown show where the detail officer spent his time chatting with the veterans in attendance.

This make-work for officers is costly. In 2004, the Beacon Hill Institute found that the state could save about $37 million to $67 million a year by replacing police details with flaggers at work sites on local roads.

The unions say that officers on detail are worth the cost because they can make arrests when a crime happens nearby. But if we want to pay officers to stand around and wait for a crime to happen, we should put them in high-crime areas, not at work sites. The unions also contend that details don't burden taxpayers because it is mostly private construction or utility companies that have to pay. But construction and utility companies don't pay for details out of charity. They pass the costs on to consumers.

The unions say that the officers need the money. But police officers are already among the highest-paid public employees in their communities. Anyway, if they really need the money, we should put the cost of employing them in the city and state budgets where it belongs, rather than hide it in consumers' utility bills.

Sensing that their political support is eroding, police unions are trying a new tack - contending that civilian flaggers will not save any money. The average hourly pay for a police detail in Massachusetts was $34.70 in 2004 and has risen since. The unions want us to believe that flaggers would cost just as much, or more.

One argument is that the job of controlling traffic at work sites falls under the state prevailing-wage law, meaning, in effect, that anyone employed to control traffic would have to be paid the union wage. But this argument is bogus, too. The prevailing-wage law applies to state-funded construction work, not traffic control at work sites. And even if it were applicable, the solution would be to change the law.

What would it really cost to hire flaggers? For an idea, we need only consult the City of Boston website. There we find a job posting for "school traffic supervisors," otherwise known as school crossing guards. The job of a school crossing guard is to control traffic "in the vicinity of elementary schools in order to permit school children to cross the street safely when going to or returning from school" and "to report violations of motorists who fail to stop when directed to do so." The average pay is $12.83 per hour.

Surely the City of Boston would pay enough to make sure that school children got at least as much protection from traffic as workers fixing a gas line. The pay for school crossing guards reflects what it really costs to get trained workers to control traffic, rather some bloated union wage.

I remember serving as a school crossing guard in the sixth grade. I wasn't paid, but I got to wear a badge and stop cars like a real police officer. Then, as now, we didn't need real officers to control traffic around schools or work sites. The difference is that now we've been fooled into thinking that we need to hire officers to do what school crossing guards do for one-third as much. Enough's enough. It's time to dump the details.

David G. Tuerck is executive director of the Beacon Hill Institute and a professor of economics at Suffolk University.