PROVIDENCE — Employee sharing of health-care costs, pension benefits and the assignment of personnel to bolster emergency medical services are the major issues that are boiling in the confrontation between Mayor David N. Cicilline and the firefighters union.

Cicilline, who is at the helm of a financially distressed city, is pressing for millions of dollars in labor contract givebacks. He has declared that each firefighter or emergency medical technician costs the city an average of $132,030 a year in wages and fringe benefits, and the burden of retired Fire Department members is one significant factor in the municipal pension fund suffering a crippling unfunded liability of more than $700 million.

As far as the firefighters are concerned, he is asking for too much too fast. They are loath to give up the hard-won gains of many years.

“The fiscal condition of the city isn’t due so much to the wages and benefits” as it is to the city’s impaired tax base, Paul A. Doughty, president of the firefighters union, said Thursday. Too much of the taxable property, he said, is tax-exempt because it is held by nonprofit organizations such as hospitals and universities.

“It is much easier to go after the workers,” Doughty said, “than it is to go after the nonprofits.”

The union leader did compliment Cicilline for the mayor’s renewed efforts to get a greater contribution from the nonprofit entities in lieu of property taxes, such as a tax on students. And he has said that the union’s contract proposal contains some cost savings for the city.

The police officers union also is at loggerheads with the mayor over contract negotiations and plans to picket the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting alongside the firefighters. Richard I. Kerbel, the mayor’s director of administration, declined to release the mayor’s contract offer to the police union.

“We’re still hopeful for the negotiations process” with the police, Kerbel said.

The major outstanding issues between the mayor and the firefighters:

•Health insurance co-shares. Cicilline has made hay of the fact that the firefighters to date have never shared in the cost of their health coverage, unlike most of their public-sector brethren and most employees in the private sector. He proposes that current firefighters and those who retire after a contract is finalized pay 15 percent of the cost. New firefighters would pay 20 percent.

The union has countered with an offer that current and new firefighters pay 15 percent — the largest co-shares of any union firefighters in Rhode Island — and future retirees 12 percent. A news article in the Thursday Journal understated the union proposal regarding retirees. Nowhere else in the state, according to Doughty, do fire union retirees co-share.

•Pensions. Cicilline wants the firefighters to go along with a reduction of cost-of-living increases for retirees in the distant future: from 3-percent compounded-interest COLAs to 3-percent simple interest for anyone hired after July 1, 2004. In addition, he would raise the minimum retirement age for pension eligibility to 55 and the minimum years of service to 25, both for post-July 1, 2004 hires. Future retirees with disability pensions also would see a sharp cut in their annuities: from two-thirds of pay to one-half. It would affect those who retire after July 1, 2014.

The union has not budged on the COLAs, the minimum retirement age or the disability annuities. It is willing to increase the minimum years of service to 25.

•Emergency medical services. In order to get more rescue trucks on the road without breaking the bank, Cicilline has proposed the transfer of six firefighter jobs from engine and ladder trucks to rescue trucks. He would abolish two firefighter jobs on engine and ladder trucks and transfer another firefighter from those trucks to work as a chauffeur for Fire Chief George S. Farrell.

The union’s counteroffer is the transfer of two firefighters from engines and ladders to rescues and the elimination of 22 other positions. No union member would be laid off in eliminating the 22 positions. The two engine and ladder posts left vacant by the transfer would be filled in 2012.

The firefighter and police unions also are locked in battle with the mayor over the contents and the management of health insurance benefits. That issue has been sent to court-ordered arbitration and separated, at least for the time being, from the other contractual disputes.

On Thursday night, the Cicilline administration said it had presented what it termed its final offer to Doughty earlier that day.

Cicilline said the proposals included the local agreeing to the "modest" health insurance co-pay outlined in his most recent contract proposal, and to accept the pay raises, beginning June 1, 2008, consistent with raises received by most other city workers. All other outstanding issues would be submitted to expedited arbitration.

According to the city administration, Doughty again refused the offer.

gsmith@projo.com