I see in the paper that Pulaski Quorum Court committees favor a 5 percent pay bonus for county employees. Do they ever learn? 1) Spending from reserves is a bad idea. 2) Employees already have received a 5 percent pay raise this year, better than just about any other-rank-and-file employee in any other sector, public or private, this year. 3) Pay raises for elected officials? They’ve only presided over a red-ink-stained enterprise and defaulted on their primary responsibility, the jail, while failing to rein in dubious practices such as Circuit Judge Willard Proctor’s Cycle Breakers program. Republicans are the sane voices in the wasteland of common sense that is the Quorum Court.
With the budget projected to have a deficit of about $1 million, adding another million bucks of spending on top doesn’t seem prudent. Why are county officials pushing this? To inspire electioneering by their employees?