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We pay parking meter readers $50K-$60K here in Portland, and the top bureaucrat in charge of the parking patrol makes $171,000 a year. Those numbers do not include the massive benefits packages the public employee unions have negotiated for themselves (including a guaranteed 8% return on contributed pension funds, even when the fund itself loses, as it did last year (-27%)). As for job security, short of pedophelia, most of these people are guaranteed employment for life. I can only hope the current system does collapse under it's own weight. That is the only chance we have of starting over and doing it right.

posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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Having done the laborious research (made as difficult as possible by our state employees charged with reporting the hard costs of maintaining our state government) I am appalled but not surprised that these measures have been put forward. For one thing, the state has to find a way to come up with the hundreds of millions necessary to make up the difference between what the PERS pension fund actually earned last year (-27%) and the guaranteed return of 8% our public employees believe they are entitled to receive. If you read the economic analysis provided by the state, one of the assumptions they make in determining the impact of government programs is that government jobs actually contribute to the economic health of the state. Another consideration: if we try to cut back the state bureaucracy, the public employees unions here will very likely do what they are now doing in California, sue to force the state to pay them what they believe they are owed.

One last point: despite the dismal performance of our public schools turning out students equipped to compete in global markets, the teacher's unions are highly intolerant of competition. In spite of the fact that the Internet offers a quantum leap in the efficacy and efficiency by which billions of children might be educated, the established purveyors of anachronistic but sacred educational paradigms have succeeded in prohibiting the growth of on-line charter schools in this state. If anyone has any doubts as to why these measures have been put forth, one need only look at the long list of organized labor and sundry private organizations which feed off government waste to get an answer.

posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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