I come today to praise two office holders that I have strongly criticized in the past. After Thursday night’s 3-to-2 Peachtree City Council vote to impose a new pay system — with some big raises — for city employees, I applaud council members Eric Imker and Kim Learnard for standing against the emotional tide that swept the other three members to their unthinking vote.
Imker and Learnard asked the simple question, “How are we going to pay for this million-dollar raise in the years to come?”
Council members Mike King, city workers’ union shop steward — and secondarily, Councilman — Terry Ernst, and Mayor Vanessa (“just keep the city pretty for the real estate shoppers”) Fleisch rammed through the new pay scheme with a lot of emotion but little rationality.
And, yes, this is the same Councilman King who in August voted in favor of a 2 percent inverse raise for those same city workers, a formula he discarded without explanation as soon as the hearing room filled with firefighters and police officers, many of them on duty and lining the walls, even though many seats were available.
(As an aside, I’d like to see that stunt pulled in the private sector, where a crowd of company workers line the walls of the general manager’s office demanding a pay raise. There would be a lot of vacant positions the next day. Nobody in the private sector would ever get away with that kind of intimidating behavior. Unless they were union members.)
(And, yes, many must have been on duty, since they drove publicly-owned fire trucks and ambulances and parked them at City Hall before arriving en masse to the council meeting chamber. Were we taxpayers paying them to leave their posts and assemble at a pay protest at City Hall? And if they were in fact off-duty, why were they driving fire trucks and ambulances to City Hall?)
I wrote a column earlier this year that addressed this phenomenon, “The winner? The Government Party,” from which the following is excerpted:
“I have said over the decades I have been doing this that a strange, but entirely predictable, thing happens to about nine-point-nine out of 10 candidates who ascend to elective office. Like Yoda warned, they go over to the Dark Side, no matter which party they represent.
“I have refined that prediction in recent years. I say that whatever party the candidates ostensibly represent, they (mostly all) become hard-core members of the Government Party once they take the oath of office.
“And to whom do Government Party members seek to please first, before and almost always instead of the voters who put them there? Government Party employees, meaning whoever draws a check paid for by the taxpayers.
“Yes, fellow Americans, years of covering city government, county government, state government, federal government have convinced me that, once on the inside, elected officials are first and foremost concerned about public employees. Those are the folks they seek to please above all else. Taxpayers are way down their gift list, an irritating crazy uncle at the spoils party.
“It’s like those elected woke up to be revealed as pod people, mind-linked agents of an alien autocracy wearing everyday skin and attending Memorial Day cookouts. …
“Government Party employees — if they are honest — will say, ‘What’s your point? Of course we come first. We are here to serve you.’
“I say, sorrowfully, that the concept of ‘public service’ no longer means what it once did. The taxpayers (that minority who still pay any meaningful taxes) exist to serve the Government Party and its self-serving goals. We have become the means to the Party’s own end. And what end is that?
“Ever-expanding, ever more intrusive, ever more controlling self-perpetuation. At whatever level. At all levels. …
“[I]f I’m only partly right, who among all these candidates on the ballot will champion the ones who pay the bills, who always pay the bills? Who among them will consider the government to be the actual servant of the people, rather than the people’s master?
Two members of the council — Imker and Learnard — were serving their true bosses, the taxpayers, with courage and integrity. My hat is off to them.
Three members of the Peachtree City Council unfurled their true colors as the Government Party trio.
The result: the big raises will come out of the city’s rainy day fund for this fiscal year. And next fiscal year?
The Government Party trio turned their backs on questions about that unimportant issue. Let the taxpayers eat cake.
Imker ruefully gave the answer afterwards: a tax increase next year of at least three-tenths of a mill, just to keep from depleting the rainy day fund and busting the budget.
As a result of the pay hike, Imker pointed out, not one city worker will be paid under Step 9 of the 25-grade scale. That means that not one — not one! — city worker will be making less than $29,896 a year. And someone with increasing seniority within that Grade 9 could make nearly $45,000 a year.
Can you think of any other private sector for-profit company in Fayette County with more than 20 employees whose lowest-paid (!), bottom-of-the-ladder worker brings in $30K a year upwards to $45K?
And the top pay scales? Oh, wow! Maximum pay for city employees in Grade 20 is $77K. (Those positions are civil engineer, fleet manager, police lieutenant, building and grounds manager, and stormwater manager.) The max for top pay grade 25 is a cool $126,506.
And check out city worker benefits, according to the Condrey survey. Health insurance premiums, worker only: $40 a month. Health insurance premiums, worker plus family: $100 maximum. For a full-family plan cost, the worker pays $100 a month, while the city (meaning the taxpayers) pays $1,901 a month. Do you have an employer that generous? I don’t and I’m part owner of the place.
I can see where lots of folks would be glad to work for the city for minimum wage just to get the sweet health benefits.
City workers get dental insurance and vision insurance.
City workers get two retirement plans, one for which they pay nothing. Yes, nothing. The city (meaning taxpayers) pays the full ride. Oh, and if you are a cop or firefighter, you can retire early at age 55 or after 25 years’ service — with no reduction in benefits.
Also provided to city workers at no cost (except to the taxpayers): long-term disability, life insurance (one year’s pay), lots of vacation (after nine years, 20 days or four weeks a year), sick leave (96 hours a year and accrual of up to 480 hours for old hands, 240 hours for new hires), tuition reimbursement, and 11 paid holidays.
I believe most government workers — federal, state, county, school systems and city — don’t have a clue how much better off they are than a huge majority of the private sector people who pay their salaries.
Compared to the private sector, Peachtree City employees have a pretty sweet deal. But you’d never know it from the downtrodden complaining that went on Thursday night.
Boiled down, their pitch was, “Show us you respect us by giving us more money.”
Three Government Party council members — King, Ernst and Fleisch — responded, “To hell with the taxpayer and the budget! We love YOU!”
The controlling force in American life in 2014 — the government workers — applauded, high-fived, and then — many climbing into their taxpayer-funded vehicles — departed City Hall for another night of complaining about the ungrateful public they say they serve.
[Cal Beverly is editor and publisher of The Citizen.]
