Very impressive work by Jim Lazar! Having known him for years while dealing with other complex issues I'm not surprised.
But here's an issue he left out: "Binding arbitration." Under State law, public safety employees cannot strike. To balance that while bargaining with management, in case of an impasse an expert arbitrator would be brought in, whose decision would be "binding" on both parties. The first thing the arbitrator would do is find "comparable cities" to compare their pay with that of the city at an impasse with its public safety union. And "comparable cities" starts with population. Right now Olympia's "comparable cities" would have something like 57,000 residents, while Tumwater's would have less than 30,000. Cover that combined population in an RFA and suddenly the "comparable cities" jump in size. The potential outcome? Everybody gets a raise. (This phenomenon would also apply to merging the cities themselves, typically touted as a moneysaver.)
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