Our Money's Worth?

The debate is put into sharp contrast in Wednesday's editions of The Tribune, and we encourage you to read the entire piece by Daniel Suddeath, the rookie reporter charged by his editors with covering the city government and political affairs. You can read it here.

There is much to be astonished by in the necessarily cursory coverage of three hours of preliminary budget wrangling. We are apparently supposed to be assuaged by the supposedly unexpected and "unmanageable by human ingenuity" increases in fuel costs and overtime expenditures. Sorry, we're not buying it. There is no excuse. Overtime is, for the most part, a function of the tendency of the appropriating and taxing body (the city council) to shy away from doing anything to repair the structural deficiencies, i.e. understaffing of the public safety functions of government, the one inarguable duty of the city and the equally indisputable top expectation of New Albany's residents.

But our job is to shadow this council, so we'll restrict our commentary to the council's budget.

The sharp contrast came during debate over the salaries of council members.

Echoing a previous refrain summoned up during debate over the still-unfinished redistricting, D5 Diane McCartin Benedetti (hey, we're not the ones who tried to draw attention to the maiden name) repeated the Bushtastic line that "it's hard...it's hard work" in advocating for a raise for council. She said, according to Suddeath's reporting, that higher salaries were necessary to induce more qualified residents to step forward to serve on the city legislature.

We can't begin to agree more with Mrs. B that the council needs more qualified people. But we strongly disagree with the contention that raising their pay will result in a "better" council.

CM At-Large Jack Messer, not a wealthy man by any means, countered with a firm but gentle rebuke, saying [council candidates] shouldn’t be running for office for the money, again according to Suddeath. "Let's face it," he said Tuesday, "we chose to be here."

We don't advocate for the lowest common denominator - you know, someone like the anonymous trogblogger who complained he/she hadn't read anything in the paper about the budget hearings. For our money, you can't get much lower or common than some of the current council members, particularly those who were elected from unconstitutionally aligned districts.

For these illegitimate occupants of office to draw $11,500 ($12,700 for gang leader Jeff Gahan) is remarkable in light of their nonperformance and malfeasance in office.

So let's engage in a little University of Chicago economics. Let's institute zero-based budgeting with our public finances and zero out council salaries and try to establish a fair recompense for the services rendered.

Before we outline our proposal let us say that we believe the salary set for New Albany's full-time mayor continues to be embarrassingly below par. So this proposal is most definitely not about the city's executive compensation.

New Albany is decades away from the kind of financial prosperity that would justify paying our part-time legislators the kind of money that would serve as an incentive for someone to divert time from career and family in exchange for cash.

In fact, the salary this city pays its legislators is just enough to attract otherwise unemployable people to seek the job. City council should not be a jobs program for the unemployable. A subsistence salary large enough to supplement the lives of a two-income family allows nonentities, the feeble-minded, superannuaries, and apparatchiks to pocket just enough to cover their bar tabs, their manicures, and their toy drives. In short, the salary now attracts the least qualified while discouraging the qualified.

Since we are extremely unlikely to ever raise the salary to a point where the qualified will clamor to obtain the office because of the attractive remuneration, why not drop the salary to a level that purports to cover expenses only.

How about $300 a month? What about $30 an hour?

We invite you to pick a number. Explain your reasoning, if you like. But certainly, discuss among yourselves.

Zero the salaries out. $30 an hour is about what we pay the average full-time cop. It's far more than we pay most other full-time city workers.

Let's test Diane McCartin Benedetti's thesis for the next three years and see if we get better performance or worse performance from the council. Then let's zero it out for 2012 and let a newly-elected council establish its own salary for their next three years.

Sound fair to you?