Sunk in Admin

The raise for M&C workers in Otsego County (see the second post down from here) is dead.

At the Administration Committee meeting today, the raise was the last item on the agenda of a five-hour long meeting. It was clear from the beginning of the discussion that three of the five members (I am not a member but was there to observe) were against any raise proposal. The actual motion that came to the floor, after an extended executive session, was for a substantially smaller raise for a much smaller group of people. The final vote was 3-2, with Betty Ann Schwerd, Don Lindberg, and new member Rick Hulse voting against, and Chair Ed Frazier and Oneontan Kay Stuligross voting in favor. I have to give Ed credit for making a sincere effort to get a proposal out of Admin, as he said he would, and to the full Board. The full Board is where a proposal of this magnitude belongs; we all need to go on record on this issue.

To be fair, the debate on the raise came right after some bad news regarding sales tax for December: it was down 17% from December 2012, after a pretty encouraging year. This represents about $300,000 less in revenues than expected, which is significant, but the Committee had spent all day approving significant expenditures with very little debate. To cry poverty and blame the death of the raises on this bit of financial news was, in my opinion, more than a bit ingenuous, especially since Schwerd and Lindberg had voted against the raise at the December and January Board meetings, before we knew anything about the sales tax.

To me, it's a matter of priority. Otsego County has a wide variety of assets: buildings, equipment, supplies, vehicles, contractors, etc. But chief among our assets – our first priority, I believe – are our employees, and especially those who shoulder most of the responsibility for getting the work of the County done. To ignore the simplest measure of support for these people is, I believe, just wrong. And to have the raises sunk in committee, after the full Board had agreed to them, is, if possible, even wronger.