Certainly by next spring, elected officials – not the brightest bulbs, always, but they do eventually come around – will acknowledge what folks with common sense have known for months. COVID is “endemic” (bureaucrat-speak for “here to stay”) and we’re going to have to live with it, rather than, as the current occupant of the White House promised in seeking his current job, “crush it.”
(How’s that “crushing it” working out, by the way?)
With acceptance of reality, life will start returning to normal. And one of the biggest matters Arlington County Board members will want to address is giving themselves big raises – maybe into the six-figure arena – something had been planned pre-COVID but then was put on hold because it would have looked rather unsavory to move forward in such an iffy moment in public-health history.
We go back long enough to the days when the likes of Ellen Bozman, Jim Hunter, Al Eisenberg – hall-of-famers in local governance, one and all – saw the job as a part-time gig where they dealt with the big issues and let the thousands of county staff members work out the details. Over the course of two decades, a more recent crop of board members with self-aggrandizing tendencies has elongated the responsibilities into what have become, in effect, full-time jobs, and now they want full-time pay.
We’ll make you a deal, you greedy so-and-so’s. We won’t pummel you for months on end, from the time you quietly announce plans to, ahem, “consider” pay raises for yourselves until the time you pull a trigger that’s already cocked. In return, you agree that part of the ordinance change approving the pay raise is that it won’t go into effect for any incumbent board member until and unless said board member earns a new term via the ballot box.
That way, the voters get veto power over any elected official enriching himself or herself at the public teat.
Do we have a deal? Of course we don’t. There’s no way board members would do something that common-sensical, in all likelihood. But they occasionally surprise us, and maybe this will be one of those cases.
Editorial: Co. Board pay raises OK … with one catch
Certainly by next spring, elected officials – not the brightest bulbs, always, but they do eventually come around – will acknowledge what folks with common sense have known for months. COVID is “endemic” (bureaucrat-speak for “here to stay”) and we’re going to have to live with it, rather than, as the current occupant of the White House promised in seeking his current job, “crush it.”
(How’s that “crushing it” working out, by the way?)
With acceptance of reality, life will start returning to normal. And one of the biggest matters Arlington County Board members will want to address is giving themselves big raises – maybe into the six-figure arena – something had been planned pre-COVID but then was put on hold because it would have looked rather unsavory to move forward in such an iffy moment in public-health history.
We go back long enough to the days when the likes of Ellen Bozman, Jim Hunter, Al Eisenberg – hall-of-famers in local governance, one and all – saw the job as a part-time gig where they dealt with the big issues and let the thousands of county staff members work out the details. Over the course of two decades, a more recent crop of board members with self-aggrandizing tendencies has elongated the responsibilities into what have become, in effect, full-time jobs, and now they want full-time pay.
We’ll make you a deal, you greedy so-and-so’s. We won’t pummel you for months on end, from the time you quietly announce plans to, ahem, “consider” pay raises for yourselves until the time you pull a trigger that’s already cocked. In return, you agree that part of the ordinance change approving the pay raise is that it won’t go into effect for any incumbent board member until and unless said board member earns a new term via the ballot box.
That way, the voters get veto power over any elected official enriching himself or herself at the public teat.
Do we have a deal? Of course we don’t. There’s no way board members would do something that common-sensical, in all likelihood. But they occasionally surprise us, and maybe this will be one of those cases.