A first court clash occured Tuesday in what’s expected to be protracted legal battles between the city and its public-safety unions over a clause in the labor contracts that the city has agreed to for decades but now says violates the Texas Constitution.

Attorneys for the city and the San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association, Local 624, argued over the so-called “evergreen clause” before visiting District Judge Martha Tanner, who retired in 2013.

It was their first appearance in court since the city filed separate lawsuits a year ago against the fire union and the San Antonio Police Officers Association over the evergreen clause, which keeps an expired contract in force for up to a decade or until a successor agreement replaces it.

City officials contend that the contract they signed in 2009 is unconstitutional because it usurps the City Council’s authority to appropriate funding for it.

“That obligation to pay salary and benefits was created in 2009, yet it’s binding to 2024, and the constitution says you can’t do that to the council members, you can’t do that to the citizens,” said Michael Bernard, the former city attorney who signed the 2009 agreement and now represents the city as outside counsel.

“You can’t create a debt that obligates today that’s payable out next year or following or five years away. That’s a debt… If you don’t set aside money now or you don’t do a sinking fund, then it’s unconstitutional,” he said.

The fire union’s attorney, Ricky Poole, argued that his client’s contract isn’t in violation and that the city merely no longer likes the terms of the agreement and is now seeking to have it tossed out.

“It’s clear the city does not like the terms of the collective-bargaining agreement it entered into,” he told the judge.

Both sides appear prepared to fight this case through the legal system, all the way to the Texas Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, firefighters and their supporters packed into a fourth-floor courtroom as a show of force — a move not uncommon for the labor unions. The case, though, was heard by a retired judge who doesn’t have to run for re-election and face potentially strong political pressures from the unions’ political action committees.

Tanner said she would contact the two sides when she renders a decision, which could take a couple weeks, or longer.

If the city wins its pursuit of a summary judgment, the fire union would appeal the decision. If the city loses, the two sides would likely argue again in 2016 during a trial. The loser in that scenario is also expected to appeal. And whoever loses at the appeals-court level would likely ask the Supreme Court to review the matter, officials on both sides say.

The only way to avoid that protracted case, Bernard said, would be if the fire union would come to the negotiating table, which it has yet to do. Meanwhile, the police union had negotiated for about 18 months and appeared close to a deal before everything fell apart in September.

Arguments in the courtroom Tuesday centered around the definition of the term “debt,” and whether one was created when the city and fire union agreed to a labor contract in 2009.

Bernard told the judge that if the city cannot create a debt without paying for it when it was created or by setting up a sinking fund — and tax — to cover its cost. The city can do neither in the case of the collective-bargaining agreement, and so it’s unconstitutional, he said.

Poole said the city has never before treated the contract like a debt and argued it isn’t one. The city has the ability to control the cost of health care — the main point of contention in the city’s contractual issues — by reducing the number of firefighters it has on staff. He agreed that the argument is over whether the contract constitutes debt.

“The language in the contract is not up for dispute. The city is not arguing that the language is ambiguous or that it should be read in a different way than what it says,” he said after the hearing. “What the city is arguing is that it wants out of its contract, and the only way it can get out is by taking this step of arguing that the contract is unconstitutional. No other appellate court has ever held that a collective bargaining agreement is unconstitutional, and yet that is the argument the city is making today. We don’t believe the contract is unconstitutional.”

Bernard said the city will continue to make good on its obligation to pay benefits until the issue is resolved.

“The obligation to paying benefits, whether it’s to any individual firefighter or to the group, the contract we entered, that obligation was created in 2009, and we’re fulfilling that obligation today,” he said. “We’ll fulfill it next year if the contract’s upheld. We can fulfill it in 2024, but we’re fulfilling it because it’s an obligation that was created in 2009, and that’s the problem.”

Because the city cannot say exactly how much the evergreen clause will cost in future years, it’s a “particularly vicious” violation of the state constitution, Bernand said. The council can’t terminate the contract at the end of a fiscal year, as it can in other contracts, so a future council can’t make certain financial decisions in the future.

“They don’t get to make that decision in 2020 because we made that decision in 2009,” he said, noting that he and City Manager Sheryl Sculley signed the last collective-bargaining agreement, ratified by the council, in 2009.

The local union say the case has statewide implications because other cities and public-safety unions have evergreen clauses in their contracts, but the city has downplayed that point because other evergreens in Texas, officials say, aren’t as lengthy.

jbaugh@express-news.net

Twitter: @jbaugh