Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien pleads for the municipal aid package as Gov. Chafee listens.
Governor Chafee, testifying before the Senate Finance Committee, made his plea for his legislative package aimed at helping cities and towns stave off the impacts of the sustained recession and steep state cuts by his predecessor to local municipalities.
The legislation would allow the cities hit hardest by these untimely events and actions – Providence, Pawtucket, Woonsocket and West Warwick – to cut disability pensions, suspend automatic teacher raises and do away with state mandates such as school bus monitors.
According to Chafee, those four communities lost a combined $94.7 million in state aid between 2008 and 2011. Providence lost $54 million, and more than $25 million in 2009 alone. Pawtucket lost almost $20 million, Woonsocket more than $12 million and West Warwick lost $6 million.
Paul Valletta, a union representative for local fire fighters, said given the extreme loss in revenue recently it’s unfair to ask municipal employees to carry so much of the burden as communities attempt to adjust to the situation.
Yes, the towns did not fund the pensions. This has been the game since God knows when. Some of it was do to the fact that a rising economy allowed the towns et al to use calculations of interest earned to offset the funding. But then I don’t know of any town/state that does not look at last years rise in revenue do to economic growth and not include that rise plus in the next years budget thus spending money before it’s in the hand. When the economy turns negative (which should be recognized when economic growth yr to yr is declining not just when it is actually negative growth) such budgeting will hurt us all.
With that, it’s time the unions realize (and I am totally, completely for unions, as the only time the wealth realize how important the “little people” are is when enough little people unions strike) that their entire livelihood is dependent on the private sector economy; specifically wages. For the public sector employee, the private sector wage is the tax base.
Well, the share of income to 99% has been declining since it’s peak in 1976 when the 1% had 8.7% to currently with the 1/5 having between 21 and 24% depending on who’s calculating. This is just wages. The private sector has no defined pensions, they get bogus 401K’s. They have crap for health care with $1000 to $2000 deductible being the norm now and they are paying more from their wage to have it, if at all. Sick time is now bunched into a universal personal time and the hurdles are cumbersome to use it with threats to discourage the use.
This decline with it’s current differential is between $1,100,000,000,000.00 (trillion) and $1.4 trillion dollars. At $1.4 trillion the 99% are now without $15,300 per family approximately. We don’t tax where the money is that means the 99% are footing most of the bill for the public sector worker and they simply do not have it.
Now, somehow, the unions have to start empathizing with the private sector, realize their wagon is hitched to the private sector worker and come up with a plan that both promotes the need and good of the unions while not looking as if they are standing in opposition to the private sector when they complain about what they are not going to get.
Every time I hear the unions focusing only on what they are loosing without acknowledging how decimated the private sector has become, I cringe. Come on unions. Since the “war one unions” began with Reagan, especially now that the public unions are in the sites, you present as if it’s only about you. You give the conservative (repub or dem) the ammo. You make it easy for the conservatives. Some how you have to make sure that the first message is that you are fighting for everyone. We need to get back to 38% unionization, then everyone benefits.
So, in the email that was sent out from RI Future that lead me here, it asked who got it more correct? They are both correct and neither are wrong other than one is concentrating on the need for an immediate fix and the other is concentrating on the long term.
BTW, for Woonsocket, CVS has been tax exempt from their property tax assements for the last 3 years. It totals about $3 million dollars. It requries 770 to 1200 jobs with the state income tax from those jobs being earmarked for Woonsocket only to make up for that. THIS IS YOUR MUNICIPALITY MISS MANAGEMENT AND STATE MISS MANAGEMENT.
” with the 1/5 having between 21 and 24% depending on who’s calculating”
Should read “with the 1% having….”
My apologies.