National Healthcare “Reform”
Posted by Mike Sylvester - 3/10/10 @ 7:25 pm
This topic was discussed a lot on this blog last year.
Last year I predicted on this blog that a major reform policy would NOT pass by 12/31/09.
Kevin Knuth and Jeff Pruitt both disagreed with me. Both felt that major health care reform legislation would be law by 12/31/09.
Well, I am going to have to say “I told you so.”
I did not think the Demcorats would be able to pass this legisialtion even with their large majorities for a wide variety of reasons.
Kevin and Jeff why do you think the Democrats failed to implement their signature legislation last year?
Mike
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2010 Census stupidity
Posted by Mike Sylvester - 3/8/10 @ 11:28 pm
I got a letter at my house this evening from the US Department of Commerce. The text of this letter is below:
Dear Resident:
About one week from now you will receive a 2010 Census form in the mail. When yuo receive your form, please fill it out and mail it in promptly.
Your response is important . Results from the 2010 Census will be used to help each community get its fair share of government funds for highways, schools, health facilities, and many other programs you and your neighbors need. Without a complete, accurate census, your community may ot receive its fair share.
What a waste of taxpayer dollars. Why do they need to send me a “warning letter” telling me that I will get a form to fill out next week?
Mike
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Teacher salary comparison
Posted by Mike Sylvester - 3/7/10 @ 9:16 pm
The local school districts have to cut costs; due to this the pay and benefits of local teachers has underwent a lot of scrutiny.
I have decided to compare my wife and her earnings to that of the average local teacher. I think this comparison will surprise many of you!
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A Nickel’s Worth of Free Advice for Huntington Mayor Updike
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 3/7/10 @ 2:45 pm
When the JG’s Tracy Warner comes to talk austerity measures for your city - well the best thing you can do is politely decline. Warner and the JG have championed every single tax increase proposed in the city of Fort Wayne and they are certainly no friends of fiscal discipline.
His column, which read as a plea from your administration to raise taxes, isn’t going to help. The people of Huntington are tapped out and they simply can’t afford to let you and your cronies tax them to oblivion to support more government jobs. So let me offer a few suggestions in place of your whining:
“But if you don’t have enough money to plow the streets, to pick up the garbage, if you don’t have enough firefighters to put out fires … where does it end?”
It ends where the taxpayers want it to end. And obviously they don’t want, or can’t afford, to pay anymore. Why does the city need to provide trash services in the first place? The entire city’s trash service should be privatized. This was the case in the city I grew up in with a population of over 400,000 and it worked just fine there. There’s obviously a market for trash service and a private company (or two) will fill the need. It will also likely do it more efficiently and the cost will be born by the users directly.
As for firefighters, more and more cities around the country are moving back to volunteer firehouses. Has Huntington considered this? If not, why not? According to the article, 15% of property tax payments are delinquent. Why not get some of these people to pay their debts by plowing the streets, hauling garbage or volunteering at a firehouse?
You might be surprised at how much people are willing to chip in when they can see the results and it doesn’t go to an ever-increasing black-hole of government spending…
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FWCS Transportation Costs Are Out of Control
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 3/6/10 @ 3:11 pm
The total transportation budget is ~$19.5 Million. With roughly 30,000 students that comes out to $650/student! That’s not only students riding the bus - that is ALL students. And 70% of that cost, or $13.7 Million is in salary and benefits for transportation employees.
Good grief.
That is absolutely out of control. Cutting that budget by merely 25% would save $5 million per year. That’s $5 million that could be transfered into the general fund (assuming the state legislature approves such transfers come next week) to eliminate teacher layoffs and reduce classroom sizes.
This district simply can’t afford to pick up every kid that lives just a few blocks away from school. Indiana guarantees every child the right to a free education but that should not include a chauffeur service to and from school paid for at taxpayer expense. The vast majority of the district’s transportation budget should be born by the riders. If you want your kid to take the bus then you have to pony up something to help pay for it.
We need to drastically reduce the bus program at FWCS, privatize it if necessary, and put the savings into areas that will improve academic achievement.
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An Open Letter to FWEA & its Membership
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 3/6/10 @ 2:49 pm
To FWEA & Members,
The entire community is struggling right now and your membership is certainly no different. Unfortunately your struggles are being compounded by the lack of leadership from the FWCS administration and poor oversight from the board. Bad financial and academic decisions from years past are coming back to haunt the district, but what you are starting to see is that the administration has no real plan to turn things around. They flailed away blaming teachers in hopes of scraping out some of the “Race to the Top” funds but that pipe dream is now squashed.
The administration’s inability to turn around this struggling district has bred a level of mistrust and apathy into the heart of taxpaying residents. Now they are attempting to drag you down with them and somebody is going down for the lack of academic progress so who do you think they want that to be? Think they will point the finger at themselves? Have you seen any such thing lately? Of course you brought much of this on yourself through your blind support of the administration and their hand-picked members on the school board.
The financial crisis this district faces is not a some sort of classic corporate union squeeze where concessions are being asked for in order to support bonuses and other forms of looting for upper management. Nor are these concessions being asked for in order to appease Wall Street in the hopes for a 50 cent increase in the stock price. No, what we are all facing in this community is a new baseline of economic conditions.
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Federal Wages and benefits need to be cut
Posted by Mike Sylvester - 3/6/10 @ 10:58 am
USA today has a must read article that discusses Federal pay as compared to private sector pay.
Our Federal Government is spending an unsustainable amount of money each and every year. This is evidenced by the fact that the Congressional Budget Office is currently projecting the the Federal Government will spend 9.7 trillion dollars more than it brings in over the next ten years. In other words the National Debt will increase by 9.7 trillion dollars over the next decade!
Clearly this is unsustainable and members of both political parties have been clamoring about fiscal responsibility for as long as I can remember. That being said; when each Party is in the majority they rapidly forget their campaign promises and start spending money to ensure their re-election.
The USA Today article referenced above is an excellent article and highlights the problem.
USA today analyzed a wide array of Federal jobs and those jobs with an equivalent in the private sector were analyzed.
When the comparable jobs are analyzed Federal workers make 12.7% more than their private sector counterparts. Worse yet is when benefits are analyzed.
Over the entire private sector the average benefits paid per worker in 2008 was $9882. The average Federal worker’s benefits were $40,785. In 2008 the average Federal worker’s benefits were worth 4.13 times the average private sector worker’s benefits.
This unfairness needs to be addressed and it needs to be addressed in a hurry. That being said; it will not be addressed because the Democrats are beholden to the Federal workers unions.
The statisticyou must take from this analysis is that in 2008 the average Federal worker’s compensation and benefits cost the taxpayers of this country almost $110,000 each. This does not include bonuses, per diem, etc.
This is clearly unsustainable.
Unfortunately the public sector unions have control of the National Democratic Party andthey will fight against the needed reforms.
I think Federal workers should make the same amount of compensation in total salary and benefits as those people in the private sector.
Mike Sylvester
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Former County IT Manager Speaks Out Against Commissioners’ Political Meddling
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 3/1/10 @ 2:37 pm
Another ex-county employee lashed out against the commissioners as former County IT Project Manager Phil Pease penned a letter describing (sort of) the issues surrounding his resignation. As usual you can expect the typical establishment-biased coverage of this in the traditional media. If anything they will interview Commissioner Nelson Peters or Bill Brown for a passing sound bite. Here at FWP we try (probably futilely) to tilt the playing field back towards the individual citizen and taxpayer by bringing you a different perspective - one that is anti-establishment most of the time. You can download Pease’s the full letter here (PDF).
During more than 4 years serving as a Project Manager for Allen County the most prominent impediment was not a lack of processes or poorly articulated needs from requestors nor was it inadequate funding. In point of fact the largest impediment was a pervasive undercurrent of various forms of punishment should questions or actions not remain in alignment with the power structure.
[...]
It widely known that the top leadership in local government (elected officials) are largely driven by political motivations, so what do you think happens when some foolhardy employee seeking to introduce efficiencies winds up shedding light on areas not necessarily in alignment with said political motivations?
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Salary Compression at FWCS?
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 2/25/10 @ 12:12 am
I loved this quote from Fort Wayne Community Schools’ Superintendent Wendy Robinson:
Robinson said it’s possible the community didn’t understand the idea of salary compression, a concept she believed was laid out clearly when the board discussed her contract but something that didn’t translate to the other administrators.
District officials have said they’ve been seeing some salary compression between the high school principals and the top administrators, who have more responsibilities, and to keep the higher positions competitive and alluring, it’s necessary to have them pay more.
The top administrators of this district have been failures by any reasonable measure. Yet because a couple of principals are overpaid we have to pay these failures even more? And if we don’t then we’re to believe that these top administrative positions wouldn’t be competitive and alluring? I can’t believe they have the gall to even suggest this when faced with a $15 million budget cut.
Just like looting bankers on Wall Street, the FWCS administration runs the district into the ground all the while demanding more and more of the taxpayers’ money. Here’s a challenge for the board to determine whether or not we need to raise wages to keep the positions “competitive and alluring”:
Go ahead and cut the salaries by 20% and post them as open positions. If 10 or more qualified people apply for any given job then fire the current administrator and hire a new applicant at the reduced rate. If less than 10 qualified applicants apply then go ahead and give them their raise.
Is there ANY doubt what would happen if they did this?
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Revisionist History Regarding the City’s “Fiscal Responsibility”
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 2/24/10 @ 11:58 pm
I’ve been looking at public pension obligations lately (another post on this coming soon) and it has reminded me how lucky the city was to have the state assume it’s pre-1977 pension obligations. These pensions were massively underfunded with the total liabilities over $90 Million. The city had saved up $20+ million in its general fund to pay down these debts but clearly they were in a precarious situation moving forward.
The state assumed these obligations as part of the property tax reform legislation that city officials continually bitch and moan about. Yes the state reduced the city’s levy by the same amount, BUT the city got to keep it’s $20 million! So that is where the highly touted “fiscally responsible” city got its bankroll from.
It wasn’t because they were particularly wise - quite the opposite. It’s because they were so far in the red regarding their unfunded pension obligations that they had to start saving cash. And then they got a lucky break because the state was stupid enough to come along and assume those obligations without taking any of the banked cash with them. Also, keep in mind that the actuarial assumption for rate of return on these pensions was 6% - think they’ve seen that over the last 3 years? Fat chance. The city would likely be dead broke right now had the state not foolishly saved their bacon…