Thursday
10Dec2009
Fire 'Em All
Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 02:32PM
It's in the news every day. "The Board of [fill in the blank] met yesterday and made a recommendation to raise fees for [fill in the public service]."
This is my rant. In this brave new world of cities, counties and states teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, highly paid boards of so called experts and leaders in their fields are gathering for closed door meetings to make critical decisions to...raise fees? To be fair, some boards are really putting on their thinking caps and also making recommendations to...cut services.
Let me be blunt. Faced with an economic crisis where current revenue does not meet current expenses, even a college dropout like myself (or a robotic monkey) could come up with an idea to raise fees and cut services. I'm not an expert. I'm not a genius. Just a person with a lick of common sense. So how is it that these so called boards of highly experienced, highly intelligent people can gather together and reach the same conclusion? Yes, I'm talking to you UC Board of Regents. And you, California Transportation Board. And countless other boards throughout the state making the same dumb decisions.
(In fact the California Transportation Board came up with three "solutions" to fund bridge maintenance in the future: raise bridge tolls, raise bridge tolls and then raise them even more, or raise bridge tolls and start charging bridge tolls to people who never had to pay them before. Wow, what a stroke of genius.)
And of course there is the UC Regents who voted to increase tuition by over 30%, and for your troubles, they will also reduce your course offerings by 20%. Yes, no need to thank them for their brilliance and hard work.
Everywhere you turn today, you hear the same thing: the only solution is to raise fees. As a taxpayer and once proud resident of the state of California, let me make this as clear as possible:
If we're going to pay you a six figure salary to get together with a bunch of other people with six figure salaries to make decisions we could have made in our sleep, consider yourself on notice. Your job is to think outside the box, to come up with creative ideas to make your budget work, to innovate solutions. Quit taking the easy way out: passing the cost on to the public. We already paid for the service once in taxes; why are you trying to charge us again?
If this is the best you can come up with, in the immortal words of the billionaire with the $20 toupee, "You're fired!"
This is my rant. In this brave new world of cities, counties and states teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, highly paid boards of so called experts and leaders in their fields are gathering for closed door meetings to make critical decisions to...raise fees? To be fair, some boards are really putting on their thinking caps and also making recommendations to...cut services.
Let me be blunt. Faced with an economic crisis where current revenue does not meet current expenses, even a college dropout like myself (or a robotic monkey) could come up with an idea to raise fees and cut services. I'm not an expert. I'm not a genius. Just a person with a lick of common sense. So how is it that these so called boards of highly experienced, highly intelligent people can gather together and reach the same conclusion? Yes, I'm talking to you UC Board of Regents. And you, California Transportation Board. And countless other boards throughout the state making the same dumb decisions.
(In fact the California Transportation Board came up with three "solutions" to fund bridge maintenance in the future: raise bridge tolls, raise bridge tolls and then raise them even more, or raise bridge tolls and start charging bridge tolls to people who never had to pay them before. Wow, what a stroke of genius.)
And of course there is the UC Regents who voted to increase tuition by over 30%, and for your troubles, they will also reduce your course offerings by 20%. Yes, no need to thank them for their brilliance and hard work.
Everywhere you turn today, you hear the same thing: the only solution is to raise fees. As a taxpayer and once proud resident of the state of California, let me make this as clear as possible:
If we're going to pay you a six figure salary to get together with a bunch of other people with six figure salaries to make decisions we could have made in our sleep, consider yourself on notice. Your job is to think outside the box, to come up with creative ideas to make your budget work, to innovate solutions. Quit taking the easy way out: passing the cost on to the public. We already paid for the service once in taxes; why are you trying to charge us again?
If this is the best you can come up with, in the immortal words of the billionaire with the $20 toupee, "You're fired!"
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