Chris Christie: I Know You're Not Happy With Your $4 Per Week Raise But Allow Me To Point Out 9% of the State Took a 100% Cut In Pay

Chris Christie being awesome as usual.

Here's a plus: He is more understanding here, more conciliatory, and less aggressively combative, as he explains, really explains, to a cop what "economic reality" looks like.

He goes down a list of horrible effects of union-controlled spending. For example, in Parsippany, cops are paid for their unused sick days. I guess there's nothing wrong with that per se, but I'd sure like to see 1) the number of credited sick days on the low end and 2) not full payment for an unused sick day, just a fraction of it, a bonus for good work.

Well they didn't have that system in Parsippany, NJ. Upshot: Four retiring cops in Parsiappany just cashed out their unused sick days throughout their working lives; one cop's payment? Nine hundred thousand dollars. The town had to take a bond just to pay these unused-sick-day bonanzas.

Fair? Um... Obviously not but trying telling them that.

Ah: Mitchell also points out a deliberate bit of hard-to-catch overgenerousness in these schemes. A deliberately hidden, stealth overpayment:

The nice thing about cashing out unpaid sick leave is that a lot of that time was accumulated when you were paid less than what you are getting paid at retirement, but you get to cash out at the highest rate you ever made.

See, that wouldn't have occurred to me (and it didn't), and that, I suppose, is the whole reason for it. Because the outsiders won't notice.

As they say, every profession is a conspiracy against the laity, and the public employees are like a crime syndicate.

posted by Ace at 01:57 PM

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