Article published Tuesday, April 4, 2006

Local union lost money, membership in '05, U.S. filing shows

Copeland

By JIM TANKERSLEY and JOSHUA BOAK
BLADE STAFF WRITERS

Laborers' Local 500 lost money and membership last year, cut holiday gifts for workers and retirees, slashed expense accounts, and reduced some executive salaries - but still spent nearly $9,000 to share a suite at Toledo Mud Hens games, new federal filings show.

The union, which employs Toledo City Councilman Phil Copeland as secretary-treasurer, ran an apparent operating loss in 2005, when it took in less cash than any year since 2001. Its membership dropped 7 percent from 2004, continuing a five-year downward trend.

The struggles occurred in a year when the U.S. Department of Labor began investigating whether Local 500 officials allowed members to spend union money for personal entertainment. Personal use of union funds is a felony under federal law.

Mr. Copeland is a Democrat running for Lucas County commissioner in the May 2 primary election.

His union duties include compiling financial forms required by the government, and his campaign has touted his experience managing Local 500's money.

He and other Local 500 officials declined to answer questions about the forms Local 500 filed Friday.

A Copeland campaign spokesman said the union's accountant would answer them later this week.

The union paid Mr. Copeland $155,540 in total compensation last year, which includes use of a car, the filings show. Mr. Copeland was paid $145,570 in salary and spent nearly $10,000 on "official business."

He spent more than $20,000 on official business and about $11,700 on "other disbursements" in 2004, when he drew a roughly $114,000 salary.

Mr. Copeland's 2005 salary would have fallen short of that, if not for $35,000 in deferred compensation he accepted in October from his union, just before he paid $63,000 in back taxes the month before his election to Toledo City Council.

Mr. Copeland has said the payment he received from Local 500 represented prior raises he put off, interest-free, to help the union from 2002 to 2004 and that the timing was not related to his tax settlement.

Mr. Copeland accepted the raises, he said last month, when union work picked up and "the money started coming in."

Federal filings show Local 500 took in about $1.68 million from dues, fees, and loan payments in 2005, down from $1.75 million in 2004 and $1.72 million in both 2003 and 2002. Mr. Copeland has said the union cut $15-per-member holiday gifts to save money last year.

Local 500 paid some top officers less in 2005 than in 2004, and it curbed their expense accounts.

Business manager Steven Thomas received a $128,458 salary, down from nearly $131,000 in 2004. His expenses dipped from nearly $56,000 in 2004 to about $27,000 last year.

Recording secretary Thomas Leonard's salary dropped from $97,583 to $96,760, and he spent less than half as much - about $12,000 - on expenses.

Other officers were paid more money last year but commanded smaller expense accounts, including President Kenneth Ragland.

The union paid about $28,000 for legal work in 2005, about $29,000 for outside accounting, and nearly $13,000 for car insurance - quadrupling its 2004 auto insurance bill. On Jan. 1, 2005, it spent $8,833 for the Mud Hens suite.

The filings left several issues unclear, including whether some members reimbursed the union for "entertainment expenditures" - which Local 500 banned, retroactively, late last year - and how the union reported those reimbursements.

A union attorney said last month that some members had already reimbursed Local 500 for entertainment spending. Mr. Thomas told a membership meeting last week that every penny in question had been repaid.

Contact Jim Tankersley at:
jtankersley@theblade.com
or 419-724-6134.