Florida county continues budget-cutting talks

Police union representatives are continuing talks with Florida administrators over a contract agreement that would save the state $70 million, NBC reports.

Last month, the PBA proposed several cost-cutting measures, such as the reduction of overtime employee attendance payouts. Other suggestions included charging a fee to officers who take patrol cars home and decreasing the pay for being called back to work from four hours of pay to two.

"We are … getting very close to drawing a line in the sand," said PBA president John Rivera before a recent meeting with Miami-Dade County administrators, as quoted by the news source. "We have made 80 percent of the concessions."

Miami-Dade County mayor Carlos Gimenez had threatened to lay off members of the police department if an agreement was not reached by November 1. However, deputy mayor Chip Iglesias noted that because significant progress was being made in the talks, the layoffs would not be carried out.

In neighboring Broward County, voters in the city of Hollywood approved a budget-cutting initiative to exclude overtime from the pension plans of police and firefighters, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.