I got in trouble for wearing a band aid on my forehead
yesterday during floor debate. Perhaps it was recognized as political statement
on behalf of fellow teachers rather than as a real sterile dressing designed to
protect a wound.
Today we came to the attic of the old courthouse where the
Joint Finance Committee meets at 7 am on budget setting mornings. We gather with
coffee or orange juice around several big folding tables where the heat rises. Typically
we share our “motions” or give each other a bit of fair warning as to where
each of us proposes that a budget should be set. How many employees will we
give an agency? How much for rent and utilities? Any replacement items, new computers,
cars, servers? And what money are we cutting? Where will funds they do get come
from? From the federal government, a dedicated fee, a grant or from the big $2.4
billion state tax bucket called the general fund?
This morning we had to make a decision we have been putting
off while the world adjusted to what the more than one billion in stimulus
funding will mean. We had to decide how much to cut state employee pay. There
were seven motions or proposals. In the heat of the attic in this big old
cement and stone building anything seemed possible. As we passed out the motion
sheets in that room that used to be part of the county jail, the options seemed
to contract.
By the time we got to our committee room in front of the
cameras our choices were down to three. Three bad motions made on the table in that
comparatively cold and empty room. All three motions proposed to cut state
employee costs by 5%. The worst one of these passed. It cut every state employee’s
pay by 3% and then mandated 2% more in employee cost be cut through furloughs,
keeping positions vacant and if necessary through layoffs.
The House members were lock step for this motion and its 3%
salary reduction and 5% net cut in personnel funding. Why in any rational way they
would want that, I do not know. We could have given more room for agencies to
use furloughs more or vacant positions. We could have used dedicated funds or stimulus
funds to keep it at 4% or even 3% total personnel cuts. But leadership in the
House has been twisting arms for weeks. I’m not sure what any state employee
ever did to them or if it is just that those particular Republican leaders need
to keep hating government, even when government is our tax dollars, people’s
jobs, people’s lives.
So I feel awful. I tried to make a motion that was only so
slightly better than the motion that we did pass. It was a band-aid for a
gaping wound. Our Democratic votes are
band-aids on gaping wounds in a state government run by people too often angry
at living in a nation increasingly blue and progressive. We serve here at the mercy
of a political party increasingly hateful toward cities, astoundingly favorable
to big industry tax breaks and deregulation at the expense of the families,
farms and small businesses upon which our economy and unique existence as a
state depends.
Some days, while I love my colleagues as individuals, the
politics get so sad and ugly that I feel like a twig in a big red river flowing
ever more quickly toward the edge of the earth.