George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary that was broadcast on 23 November 2012.]

Listeners to these commentaries have rightfully come to expect the discussion of important national, international, and even cosmological issues.  This evening I wish to reduce considerably the scope of such perspectives, and focus on what should become the next little dust devil down our main street to catch some well-deserved attention.  It involves the tax increase that our Nevada County Consolidated Fire District convinced us to approve last March.  The matters of fact in the following tirade come from the lead story (paywalled) in last Tuesday’s (20nov12) edition of The Union.

Apparently the new tax revenue will be used primarily to keep up the spirits of our firefighters who belong to ‘Local 3800’ of your neighborhood public service employees’ union.  In fact, things down at the fire house are in such dire straits that retroactive raises, holiday pay, and insurance benefits are necessary to keep things going on an even keel.  Director Keith Grueneberg even went so far as to reveal that these raises were already extracted by Local 3800 before anyone knew where the money was coming from, and are now “critical to the morale of the district.”

John Leonard, the lone director opposing the raises and subsequently voted off the board, tells us that “the district is in the same financial straits that it was in March” when we voted for the bailout tax increase.  In more detail Leonard warns, “There is not one single extra penny, there is barely any money for gasoline and no money for new equipment, and if we keep awarding salary increases, this district is going to go broke.”

According to people in the know, Local 3800 wields some serious influence with the Consolidated’s board.  In case we forgot, the state and country are broke and borrowing money from anyone they can like an escapee from Gamblers Anonymous heading for the $2 window with a list of sure winners.  There are 24M and more people across the country unemployed, with Bernanke at the Fed telling us that number is growing.  Millions more former workers are on permanent dole, and we have a fire department whose employed staff has morale problems.

Last time anyone advertized for an open slot for firefighters, the line of qualified applicants numbered in the hundreds and stretched around the block.  And our fire district’s staff is having morale problems that need the salve of the long green in order to restore happy faces on everyone.  There is no doubt that President Roosevelt’s warning about the damage that public service unions would do was on the mark, as we have seen now for over thirty years.  The hundreds of billions of dollars of unfunded liabilities and debt that local jurisdictions are burdened by seems to have made no impact on outfits like our Consolidated fire district playing footsie with Local 3800.

In a bad economy with a surplus labor supply, the answer on what to do with first responders demoralized with their steady jobs, regular paychecks, and good benefits is clear.  In private industry such a situation would have management rotating out the old expensive workers, and hiring more grateful new ones who understand the economic environment that surrounds and inflicts us all.

I mean it’s not like these guys have been prudent protectors of the purse or even professional managers.  For example, the Board’s counsel who can earn $173K a year cannot even attend board meetings to resolve the “many points of legal contention” that regularly come up during these gatherings.  What does he do? Mail it in?

And then the recent fire chief was in a “physical confrontation with an employee”, and other bickering and bad blood in the district’s management cadres.  But don’t get me started, I’m as guilty as you.  Like a dummy, I too voted for the tax increase.

My name is Rebane, and I expand on this and related themes in my Union columns and on georgerebane.com where the linked transcript of this commentary is posted, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However these views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.