Why Government Pays More For Stuff - Roads Edition
December 28th, 2007One of the supreme ironies of US governments is that they are supposed to be the collective effort of all citizens. With everyone helping, it stands to reason our governments could get things done cheaper than any other group.
Alas, too many people these days put their own interests ahead of the common good.
Our government employee unions have managed to get laws written that guarantee all available money goes to increases in compensation, so we have some of the highest government employee compensation in America.
It’s not just wages and benefits, either. Somebody emailed me this week an old (2002) article from members of the American Planning Association which documents “overwhelming statistical evidence that the cost estimates used to decide (which transportation projects) should be built are highly and systematically misleading.”
December 29th, 2007 at 8:21 am
Thanks for letting us know about NRS 288 which means “Our government employee unions have managed to get laws written that guarantee all available money goes to increases in compensation, so we have some of the highest government employee compensation in America.”
That would be YOU, Bob. You cash a Clark County, Nevada government paycheck every 2 weeks. ‘You’, as in ‘our republican values’, where a man and wife are one, so your wife’s job with the County puts food on your plate, a roof over your head and a pension for life downstream….has your wife asked for a paycut? Did she, in light of the County’s $41m shortfall this year quit her job, or “Alas, too many people these days put their own interests ahead of the common good.”?
December 29th, 2007 at 8:59 am
I’ve fully disclosed my wife’s employer at every opportunity.
You make a pretty weird argument, actually. It’s okay to have the highest compensation for local government employees in America (leaving the workforce chronically shorthanded) but not okay for me to bring it up?
December 30th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Mark D is off the mark in his personal attacks by attempting to hypocritize your ideology and political philosophy through your wife’s choice of career and employment. He’s even further removed from reality when he challenges her to a volunteer pay cut (which to my knowledge government systems have no mechanism to implement) and possible volunteer unemployment?
Representation does not require one’s family to become martyr’s for a greater good.
Trust me, if you have followed Bob’s political positions at all, you would see that Bob’s spending control advocacy would force this issue within the next decade because state government would incur substantial downward pressure on available money for service delivery and would ultimately have to look to evaluating how the allocation of tax dollars occurs between the state, county, and cities. Once this occurred, cities and counties would have to look at the greatest expenditure which is the exponential growth in employee salary and benefits. Someone would have to decide whether to cut positions or limit salary/benefit growth, or even both. This should be occurring now, but there’s no appetite for spending control and it’s consequential impact.
So, before you attack family members who happen to choose a career in government and ask them to act in ways you would never act (volunteer unemployment for the greater good), make sure you first show everyone your letter of resignation for the same or similar cause, and then your letter to the Governor, your senator, your assemblyman, your County Commissioner, and your City Council member your support for true spending controls and caps on public employee salary/benefit growth.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Mark D. Must be a die hard Democrat. I wonder if his wife/girlfriend has offered to take a pay cut at her job to help her employer show a stronger bottom line? I’ll bet not!
When people like Bob Beers (which aren’t many) try and make things right, there are always the nonproductive people trying to stop him. Is that you Mark D.?
If the Democrats had their way, we would be paying a 75% income tax. With the democrats, the money you earn is theirs and they will allow you to keep what they think you can live on.
Remember one thing! You vote a democrat into office and the first thing they do is to raise taxes. The last true Democrat was John F. Kennedy. GOD rest his soul. The Democrats of today know only how to steal as much of our money as they possibly can.
Don’t you people want to keep more of the money you work so hard to earn? If so, Don’t vote a Democrat into office, but get Bush out.
Bob, you are the only Politician trying to do right for the people of Nevada.
Yes! I am a Republican after being a Democrat for over 55 years. I was lucky enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Don’t stop! I back you 100%.
January 5th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Steve,
Sorry you took it that way. I have followed Bob’s career for many years; he is one of the most sober and deliberative thinkers inthe tank of 63. I know that not everyone knows his wife works for Clark County government. So when Bob goes after public employees (disclosure: I am not) with statements such as;
“Our government employee unions have managed to get laws written that guarantee all available money goes to increases in compensation.”;
and;
“Alas, too many people these days put their own interests ahead of the common good”,
I simply think of his wife (good woman I assume, actively and sincerley participating in the community like other public servants) and wonder if she would quit her job or take a pay cut? Charity begins in the home.
hypocrisy; “1: a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially : the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion” (merriam-webster)
January 5th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Timothy,
I am an R and I voted for Beers to be governor. Why are you yelling at me? Beers is the one who said that public employees are selfish, not me. I only asked if his household was willing to quit or reduce their government pay as he implied others should do?
Since Reagan, ALL R administrations have run up government spending and increased debt and deficit spending while reducing revenue-ie, borrowing money from the Chineese, Germans and Japan to fund US spending. We have elected republicans that talk the talk of fiscal conservatism but vote like welfare queens; they spend beyond their means. As for the other Party, I’ll leave it to their own to police their elected officials.
As for your insight on government spending I offer the following expenditures of state money from last legislative session;
$500,000 toward library in Clark County
$2m+ for museums including the Chineese Workers Museum
$200k for the private Black Mnt Foundation
$200k for CA. interpritive trail center
$164K for Sparks Community Center
$225k for a picnic area
$474k for the arts
$150k for a humanity encylopedia
$1.5m for White Pine County courthouse design
..and on and on.
Bob Beers voted ‘yea’ on every one of the listed appropriations…see committee vote on SB443, June 4, 2007.
Now, if the local population in the counties and cities and towns would pay their own way, ie tax themselves to pay for what their community needs that would indicate the self-sufficient individualism we Republicans include in “our values”. Since they don’t, State money is diverted away from priorities that State needs to address, like roads, prisons, our National Guard units.
January 5th, 2008 at 11:34 am
I said “too many people put their self interest ahead of the common good.” I did not say public employees are selfish. Big difference, fella.
Many good, dedicated public employees work hard to accomplish public good, despite the sometimes driftless and always stodgy bureaucratic muck that hampers their professional efforts, and despite counting co-workers who do not, generally without sanction. It’s the nature of government, and one of the reasons our founding fathers suggested it should be limited.
I did vote for SB443, after working my darnedest to make it smaller than originally proposed. You may (or may not) note that all the votes against were protesting that its spending scope had been reduced.
I did not vote for SB579 which, like SB443, contained a mixture of sensible and insensible appropriations. Bills with bundled appropriations requiring a yes/no vote have always been difficult calls. That is why we need an overall limit on government funding, because the American system of legislating will always spend all available money, then complain that there’s never enough.
Final point: local governments in Nevada are not allowed to tax themselves. Only the legislature can do that.
January 5th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Thanks for the update!
1. You may wish to correct the Finance Committee minutes of June 4, 2007, at page 40, where it is recorded that the motion to ‘move to do pass as S.B 579″ passed unanimously. No members were noted as being “absent” for the vote.
2. Re; your ‘final point’; With regard to home rule illumination, my point is that these communities didn’t ask for BDRs to raise taxes to provide for themselves, but that State funds were used for a petty local community interest in lieu of the community providing for themselves by spending their own money.
3. Finally, with regards to your comments in paragraph 1, I think a reading of your initial comments could lead a reasonable person to deduce that you have an untoward opinion of the government class of employee as you implied. If no offense was intended, I will assume none was offered, but really, looking back at the four paragraphs, including the joiner in para two,”alas”, it all reads as one thought implying that government workers put themselves first….but, if you say that’s not so, well, okay.
I am dismayed that your bill, SB 108 (requiring ‘zero based budgeting’ of 20% of the State budget begining in 2009), passed in the Senate, but failed to be heard in the Assembly.
January 5th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Hi Mark (or whoever you are, since the email address you claim actually belongs to a youth soccer coach in Chula Vista who could not vote in last year’s election of a Nevada Governor) -
1. Thanks for pointing out the incomplete record of the committee vote. The floor vote is unambiguous.
2. Can’t argue with you, although each of the projects had testimony in favor from local elected officials and most were state, not local, responsibilities. I traded my “yes” vote for a reduction in most projects’ scope. A “no” vote would have been only a token.
3. I had hoped the opening words of paragraph three would be clear. I figured only a union rep could attribute actions of the union to government employees as a class or as individuals…