Jeff Webb's editorial column in yesterday's Hernando Times really hit the nail on the head. If you missed it, he discussed Hernando County employees courting the idea of joining the Teamster's Union. He referred to the anti-tax zealots that have driven the employees to consider unionizing after last summer's contentious budget debate.
In his article, Mr. Webb referred to "the fiscal fascists who vowed to punish county commissioner for their benevolence with their government bashing scheme in next year's election. The county commissioners Mr. Webb referred to were Mr. Stabins, Ms. Rowden and Mr. Kingsley for their affirmative vote to approve county employee salary increases. This public threat to their political future was leveled at the last budget hearing by Blaise Ingoglia of the Government Gone Wild seminars.
To quote Mr. Webb article, he said "Property taxes are too high because the real estate, building and mortgage industries were to busy making money three years ago to worry about not over inflating the housing market". In my opinion, this single statement set the tone for the downfall of the housing market. Speculators fueled an artificial economy and are crying foul for the mess they created in their respective trades and now expect everyone else to pick up the pieces.
Will the county employees vote for the Teamster's Union representation? I hope not but who would blame them after being held up to public ridicule for months being depicted as being lazy, incompetent and overpaid...
3 comments:
I believe they will vote for union representation, only to keep the "status quo", not for large pay increases. Status quo meaning benefits. Their illustrous HR Director, Dupre, with a swipe of the pen, decreased sick and vacation hours reducing them and changing them into Personal Time Off hours. Many employees realized at that moment, after losing benefit hours, they had no representation.
This isn't the first time the county employees tried to get a union. They have tried this twice before who were the fiscal facists that forced them in the past???? I think it's funny that Jeff Webb used the term facist, I would have thought he'd use neocon instead. Stick and stones.....
Some county salaries are to high, to the point of being WAY out of line. Others are very reasonable, and some are low. You can't paint this issue with a broad brush. Each position or category needs to be seperately reviewed to determine if the compensation is reasonable for the effort and expertise required.
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