They Did It Again
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- February
- 12
Democrats shouldn’t wonder why they are so often tarred with the stereotype of being profligate, big-government spenders. The fact is they keep reinforcing the bad image with their actions.
At least that continues to be true in Westchester where the 17-member County Board of Legislators, led and controlled by chief Democratic pooh-bah Bill Ryan, has just doubled its staff. That means only one thing—more patronage. Come on you don’t think for a minute that they’re actually going to have a fair hiring process, do you? It’s favor time, folks.
The part-time board’s budget for salaries goes higher and higher…It now stands at $3.38 million, up from last year’s $3.22 million. A big part of that is the pay raise they gave themselves in the 11th hour of the 2005 legislative year.
So now, with all this new help they’re planning to take on, the legislators will actually do less work for more money. It’s a racket underwritten by a legion of pick-pocketed victims—the taxpayers.
This entry was posted
on Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 7:02 pm by Phil Reisman.
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Phil Reisman is a veteran journalist and native of Westchester County. He began his career in 1977 as the head copy boy of a startup New York City newspaper that quickly went belly up. Reisman was not to blame for the newspaper's failure, or so he claims.
Mr Reisman
It is amazing how often you repeat “talking points” as if they are true.
You wrote:
“Democrats shouldn’t wonder why they are so often tarred with the stereotype of being profligate, big-government spenders. The fact is they keep reinforcing the bad image with their actions.”
For the last ~six years, Republicans have been in control of The White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and the majority of State Legislatures.
What party has been profligate during this period?
What party has increased discretionary spending to levels not seen since LBJ?
What party has laden the budget with earmarks and passed corporate tax breaks NEVER seen before?
Even at the state level, do you see the Republican controlled State Senate as followers of St Francis of Assisi?
Stick with making your sexual comments about Jeanine Pirro. You can explain that away by saying it is a macho thing.
The only excuse for not seeing Republicans as profligate is ignorance.
I’m all for fair pay for fair work, especially in public service, but unbridled and unaccountable greed is the only rational explanation for Bill Ryan, Clinton Young and the rest of the Board of Legislators (majority and minority) raising their own pay and expanding staff in this way.
If the Board took seriously its oversight responsibilities—held hearings, issued subpoenas, independently evaluated the effectiveness of county government to hold the other branch accountable—then maybe the staff increases might be justified. Unlike rhe Nassau and Suffolk legislatures that serve as the models for Westchester’s staff bloat, in Westchester the Board of Legislators does none of these things. To the contrary, there’s no package of legislation and no contentious oversight hearings of county agencies to which the Board can point as justification to expand its staff. And the Board makes no such attempt: the staff they hired aren’t even fiscal or legal experts and some of them work from home on unspecified political things. As such, this is complete waste and graft.
Worse, this waste and graft is on a scale that, relative to the work the Board does do, is obscene. There is something fundamentally wrong when the number of staff soars but their collective work product does not, and when a county legislative staff member earns more than veteran judges.
If the Board will not use these staff to produce meaningful legislation, deeply probe the effectiveness of county agencies, hold the county executive accountable as the county charter envisions and generally do its job, then voters will demand that these staffers be stricken from the next budget.