As a thought-provoker, Sunday's Lincoln Journal Star article on city personnel wages and benefits was very welcome. I currently know very little about how governments determine personnel wages and benefits. Hopefully the thoughts the article generated in me will spur me to learn more.
It would be easy to freak out after reading an article like this, and I fully expect the predictable rants to show up in the Journal Star's letters to the editor throughout the next week or so. I don't think a freak-out is in order. There are way too many complex variables involved for a single day's newspaper coverage to justify any sort of conclusion.
That being said, you know there's a serious problem when there exists a widespread belief in two simple truisms about government employment: 1) the pay and benefits are beyond excellent (for most occupations) for the work required; and 2) you practically have to murder somebody to get fired (and even then you might score a nice severance package). Now, if Wal-Mart had that sort of a reputation, fine. But my government? Those aren't the stereotypes I want my tax dollars to support. I grant that relying on stereotypes and generalizations is tricky, but, as I so often say, stereotypes almost always originate in reality. It is extraordinarily unlikely that this is one of the stereotypes that deviates from the usual pattern.
Are the city's wages actually "high", and therefore a problem? I think they are. I don't believe that Lincolnites get the bang they deserve from the bucks they pay toward personnel costs. I don't think the separation between what we pay and what we ought to pay is great -- I'm not talking 25% or anything like that -- but it is definitely nonzero. What's my justification for that assertion? I don't have one. It is based on nothing more than a "gut feeling" analysis of the situation. Therefore, I am completely open to changing my mind. I would love to hear reasoned arguments to the contrary.
At this point I don't have a proposed solution. I think it would be unwise of me to offer specific solutions to a "problem" that may not, in fact, be a problem. I need more numbers, more comparative data, and so forth. I can, however, offer some general ideas that I'm sure others have already considered, and which ought to always be on the table. One is to decrease the rate at which wages are increasing. Over the past decade Lincoln has rushed to get its wages to "catch up". We've caught up, so we can ease up on the accelerator. Second, we can make pay raises rarer and more difficult.
I'm going to ask friends and family members what they think about Lincoln's wages. I'll post back here if they have anything exciting to say. You folks always have exciting things to say, so I look forward to reading your comments.
Comments
See what your friends and neighbors have to say about this.
I know too many lazy ass people that have landed cushy city jobs not to be a *tad* bitter about this issue.
That’s not to say I wouldn’t mind a well paying cushy city job myself.
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