What you are seeing here is just one example of what happens at the end of the General Assembly. Tomorrow night will be the last night, and today we find this. It looks like “SOME” state employees will be seeing raises this year. Is anyone surprised?
I don’t know why they wait until the eleventh hour to push some of these things through. I’ll be interested to see what business they will be doing tonight or rather at two and three in the morning.
Seems like everyone likes to get things done right before vacation time. Look how busy The Supreme Court was this past week.
FBH, sure you do, they do this so that first there is no time for the people to complain prior to the vote, and second they then go on vacation and the people forget about it before they come back and start all over again.
There is no reason that the budget items have to be the very last thing they do otherwise. Other than the tried and true excuse, “it how we have always done it”.
This is a backward and corrupt state full of self serving cabals.
Yeah, that $7,000 sure will throw the budget out of whack.
Have you ever heard of the big picture? Have you ever seen one? You think of yourself as a mighty hunter when all you’ve killed is a few mosquitoes.
Geezer, it’s not the amount, it’s the principle. When the state is struggling to balance the budget, and when the average state employee will go another year without a raise, how can they justify raises for secretaries and directors?
I would think a good progressive such as yourself would be outraged at the elitist mentality of such an act.
Geezer, as Ev Dirksen said “A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money”. Same principle, smaller scale.
Much smaller scale. If there were larger outrages, one assumes Frank would have highlighted them.
This one is particularly annoying because Elaine Manlove is a partisan hack, but my point stands: For all the caterwauling people do about the budget, finding actual wasteful spending is hard. If all you can point to is $7,000 and leave it at “that’s just an example,” well, it’s a poor example, because it’s pretty hard to get outraged about.
Let’s put it this way: Excluding public school teachers, who aren’t actually state employees, there are about 15,000 state employees. If we split that $7,000 equally, they’d each get a 50-cent raise.
Geezer continues to miss the point. Maybe because Geezer has never worked under management. Geezer if you are an employee that hasn’t had a raise I quite some time, but you managers keep getting raises, well it breed contempt.
Nowhere did I say this amount was excessive, only that it is wrong to give raises to directors and secretaries and not average employees.
Frank,
One day you bemoan that ” the average state employee will go another year without a raise”,
yet six days ago you said ….”I [Frank] I would cut. ALL state spending by 5%.” – Frank Knotts
June 26, 2015 at 7:51 pm
Make up your mind.
Delacrat, how do I type this so that you will read slowly and carefully? I said cut five percent across the board and let the agency heads prioritize. So is your well worn play book laminated? Any time cuts are discussed, Democrats go immediately to employee wages , firemen, teachers, police, and such.
And if you think employee wages are the only place to make real cuts, why are the directors and secretaries getting raises?
Frank,
Read what you write slowly and carefully.
“Any time cuts are discussed, Democrats go immediately to employee wages , firemen, teachers, police, and such.” Frank July 3, 2015 5:39 AM
“… a few less government employees might not be the worse thing to happen” – Frank June 25, 2015
Geez, today, you wax lachrymose, accusing Democrats of cuts to employee wages, while 8 days ago you, yourself relished the possibility of employees actually losing their jobs.
Spare us your crocodile tears, Frank.
Delacrat, when intelligent people act as if they can’t follow the simplest point, simply to fulfill their needs to demonize the opposition, it is shameful.
I have said several times that my problem is not that they might cut the number of employees, but that the Democrats use that threat to scare people from asking for any type of cut whatsoever.
And nowhere were wage cuts discussed by me, and certainly not by legislators. My point has been, let me state it for at least the third time, that if they are “NOT” going to “INCREASE” the wages of the average state employee, then why are they giving raises to management? Are you with me now? Do you understand what I am asking? Or will you break out the well worn playbook of tactics to deflect and mislead?