The Philadelphia City Council regularly negotiates contracts with the Philadelphia Police Department, including how much money the police will pay to keep the city safe. These labor contracts are traditionally drawn behind closed doors with no direct input from the public. 

The process involves the city sending a proposal to the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and the FOP sending back its counter-proposal. If an agreement is not reached, the discussion goes into mandatory arbitration.

With several people calling for #policereform across the country, this negotiation process has drawn considerable fire from critics. Philadelphia Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson presented a police reform bill in 2020, stating that the council would have to submit its initial proposal for the public's approval 30 days before it was sent to the FOP. The council passed the bill with a 15-2 vote in September 2020. The FOP fought against it, and it was determined in October 2021 that public input would not be required.

This issue has sparked a fair amount of controversy. Gilmore Richardson stated in 2020 that she hoped the bill would bring "transparency and accountability to the process and allow our citizens to have a voice in how we spend over $700 million of our city's budget." Police union spokesman Mike Nielon called the bill an "effort by council to demonize rank-and-file police officers in the city."

Those who favor making negotiations public say that citizens should have more control over how their money is spent. They say that transparency in the contract process is an essential step toward increasing police accountability.

Those who oppose public involvement in the negotiations maintain that this would only add to the "us against them" mentality that some members of the public already feel towards the police. They believe that it would negatively impact the police department's ability to negotiate fair wages for performing their jobs.

The question up for debate: Should public opinion be factored in when negotiating #police labor contracts?