Covington commissioners confronted new requirements for funding police training and hiring costs at their meeting on Tuesday.
They enacted an ordinance that brings the city in line with Senate Bill 101, which passed into state law last year.
SB 101 and the new ordinance require cities in Kentucky to reimburse each other for costs associated with the hiring and training of new police academy graduates if the recruit decides to switch jobs from one department to another within the commonwealth. The ordinance extends the amount of time from three to five years and only applies to recruits hired after June 29, 2023.
The ordinance passed with a 4 to 1 vote in favor with Mayor Joe Meyer casting the only dissenting vote.
“The reality of the situation that we’re facing in law enforcement is it’s extremely competitive,” said Commission Member Ron Washington, who formerly worked as a police officer, just before the city clerk called the role vote.
Washington and other regional leaders have repeatedly spoken in the past about the need to increase the number of local police trainees in the face of inefficient training requirements from the state, dwindling academy enrollment rates, an underfunded legacy pension system and salary competition from across the river.
The final point is especially pointed for Covington given its proximity to Cincinnati. As such, the new ordinance presented a quandary in terms of enforcement.
“So, of course, this is a river city and just across the river is Cincinnati,” said Commission Member Steve Hayden. “So they could hire any of our trained officers at will…, but there’s no recourse whatever’s done?”
“There’s no recourse against the other municipality,” said City Attorney David Davidson, referencing cities outside of Kentucky. “This ordinance and this statute gives enforceability between municipalities in the state of Kentucky.”
Discussion continued and included similar questions about new fire fighter graduates. New fire graduates are actually directly on the hook for reimbursing the city if they leave employment with Covington within three years of their graduation. This stipulation was already in place prior to Tuesday’s vote.
The question arose: What happens if a new officer takes a job at a department in another state, and the city can’t seek reimbursement from that department because Kentucky law wouldn’t apply to them?
“It would require pursuing the individual as opposed to going after another municipality,” Davidson said.
In other words, if the city wanted to get their money back, they would have to bring legal action against the officer directly.
“So we’re entering into a contract with an individual police officer under which the police officer is binding an agency that might hire him to repay us?” Meyer asked.
“That’s the problem,” Davidson replied. “…Can we bind other municipalities outside of our jurisdiction, and I don’t believe we can. But can we pursue the individual officers? The only way we can do that is through the agreement that they enter into with us.”
Davidson said that the city had never had to go after a police officer or fire fighter in that way since he’d begun working there. He added that doing so would be practically difficult, and even if the city could get the case into court, there was no guarantee a judge would grant them a favorable ruling.
Fire Chief Mark Pierce and Police Chief Brian Valenti both attended the meeting but did not comment.
Meyer seemed baffled, expressing that the law mandated an officer’s “future employers to hire them, which, of course, they have absolutely no legal right to do.
“And then, at the same time, we’re saying for the fire department, the individual firefighters are responsible for reimbursing the city for their training.”
Finally, the mayor asked, “What do we all want to do with this?”
“It’s written as legally binding as it can be written,” Hayden said.
“Because of what’s going on in our country, nobody wants to be cops,” Washington said. “So this is a tool for our law enforcement agency to keep law enforcement officers that we’ve invested a lot of money in here.”
The commission then cast their vote, 4 in favor and one dissenting.
Read the full text of the new ordinance here.
The next meeting of the Covington City Commission will take place on Tuesday, Jan. 16 at 6 p.m. at Covington City Hall on Pike Street.