Other people's money
There are no comments for this page [ Add Comment ]Monday, April 16, 2007
It's all smiles and backslapping down at city hall, because Ogden's elected leaders and the city's employees have agreed on a pay raises for next year at between $3,000 and $3,100 for each employee. The deal means there won't be a repeat of the salary wrangling that gripped the city for months during the spring and summer of 2006.
The thing we'd like to know is: How many average workers in the private sector are getting $3,000 raises this year?
And in addition to everyone on the Junction City payroll getting a $3,000 to $3,100 pay raise -- the city is paying the full freight for an expected 7.5 percent increase in medical insurance premiums for its workers.
That sounds pretty generous to us. Maybe too generous. It reminds us a lot of the budget-setting process in 2005, when Ogden officials crowed about being able to offer 2 percent cost-of-living increases to workers, and up to 5 percent on the merit scale -- a potential 7 percent increase during a year when workers in the private sector weren't getting half that.
We don't think city workers, in Ogden or anywhere else, should be confined to the poorhouse. But they shouldn't be getting raises that are the envy of private sector workers, either.
Ogden's Chief Administrative Officer John Patterson said this will save money because it will bring Ogden pay in line with what other communities pay, and so workers won't leave Ogden to work elsewhere and the city won't have to spend extra money training new employees. True, we wouldn't leave, either, if we were getting $3,000 per year increases and having the city absorb all of our insurance premium hikes.
The thing that seems to be getting lost in this discussion between elected leaders and city employees is that this is taxpayer money. As we've urged before, raises ought to be reasonable and mirror, more or less, averages in the private sector.
This money comes from Ogden businesses and residents. The city should be exercising much more discipline than this in an effort to be fiscally responsible.
Text 
