Throw a pile of money in front of some politicians and it’s sure to create great entertainment.
Listening to the Aug. 24 Española city council meeting didn’t provide as much entertainment as it did a lesson in politics and good old human behavior.
The American Recovery Act can only be labeled as public welfare. We’ve seen this money spent on everything from vehicles to equipment and most recently bonuses for people who showed up to do a job they chose to do and for which they are well-paid.
Public bodies everywhere are taking the millions of dollars trickling down to them from the Act and showering it upon employees in the form of a “stipend.” It can’t be called a bonus, because that’s illegal.
The justification for the bonuses is that people did their jobs during most of 2020 and the first half of 2021. They showed up. No one went “above and beyond,” whatever that means in public employment. No one ran into burning buildings and saved kittens. Actually that may have happened. But no one took a bullet or balanced a spread sheet so perfectly it brought tears to the eyes of CPAs.
People showed up and did their job, as we all did.
We’ll immediately acknowledge first responders are an exception. While everyone was doing the job they were already being paid to do, first responders were in danger of exposure to COVID-19 almost the whole time they were on duty. Also they were working with other people probably exposed. Add to that risk the element with which first responders interact. Yes there are the heart attacks and falls but by and large these guys (and gals) are dealing with unmasked, unreasonable, often violent people who don’t care about anyone’s safety, especially a cop’s, deputy’s or paramedic’s.
That’s a different level of danger during the dark days last summer of high positive test rates, before a vaccine was available.
It can be argued that’s what first responders agree to when they take the job, but not on the level they encountered daily, and to some degree still are today.
However, we’d also argue someone behind a cash register at Center Market is a hero. The rude, nasty, unreasonable people who feel free to unload their frustration with bread selection or forced mask-wearing on a total stranger doing their job running a register baffles a sane person. Again, that was not in anyone’s mind when they took the job to run a register anywhere.
But Center Market wasn’t showered with taxpayer money to distribute to those heroes of the check out lane.
Rio Arriba County went through its resolution in late spring and approved it in July. Cut and dry. All employees who worked six months during about the same period as the city’s resolution will receive $2,500. If you don’t work for the County in July to receive the check, you don’t get one.
One commissioner tried to get money for past employees, who had left the County, but that never gained any traction.
The city was a wildly different story. Councilors picked apart what is essentially a gift to people, borrowed from future taxpayers. The recipients did the job they were hired to do, in many cases the jobs were much simpler.
Consider the finance folks who have to listen to residents day in and day out explain how they couldn’t have used that much water. Or they were only going to pay part of the bill for whatever reason. Those folks had a solid eight months of peace and quiet. They just went out to the front box at city hall or opened their mail and processed payments.
It was illegal to disconnect water service so that was one less unpleasant task. Not a lot of people were moving around so the connection calls were minimal also. A lot of that job was eliminated.
Several councilors had a sacred cow. One wanted the employees who didn’t meet the 12 month rule to get paid something anyway. Another wanted to include public works employees in the same category as first responders. There is clearly no comparison there. Some wanted former employees to get paid and others said they weren’t loyal.
This bonus is what people in college call, “Money from home.” It’s unexpected and unearned. The proper thing for councilors to do would be to vote on the resolution and move on. Instead they made it painfully obvious where their voting base was, as several advocated for certain employee classes while ignoring others who fit their own argument much better. Someone working on a water line break deserves more money, but someone working on a transmission fluid line break doesn’t?
We’ll be glad when all these government handouts are distributed and the working people in this country actually go back to work and stop expecting someone to pay their rent, give them a bonus or pat them on the back for showing up.