SULLIVAN'S SALVOS
November 23, 2021
Sullivan’s Salvos 11/30/21
In this edition:
*Race on Trial
*ARPA Part 2
*Unsubscribed from Salvos?
*Did You Know?
*Race on Trial
Sad as it is to say, we still live in a country where a white man can kill a black man and expect to walk free 95% of the time. Just take a deep breath, exhale, and think about that for a moment. In 2021, in the United States of America, a white man can murder a black man and walk away 95% of the time. I hope it bothers you as profoundly as it bothers me.
*ARPA Part 2
In this installment, we will discuss a controversial issue surrounding ARPA: giving bonus pay to County employees.
One thing that many municipalities have done with ARPA money is award bonuses to workers who served the public during the pandemic. This use of ARPA money is specifically called out as acceptable. Personally, I object to using the money in this way. There are several reasons for this:
1. First, I believe that if you are going to do it, you need to do it for everyone. It is simply too arbitrary to go through and decide that the Auditor’s Office staff gets it, but the Recorder’s Office does not. Johnson County had three Departments/Offices request this - Medical Examiner, SEATS, and Treasurer.
Would we really give bonuses to the Medical Examiner’s Office and not include the other emergency responders (Ambulance and Sheriff)? SEATS drivers did everything that was asked of them and more. But would we really give it to them without giving something to the Public Health staff at the center of the pandemic? The Treasurer’s Office saw people throughout the worst of the pandemic. But should they have done so? Perhaps we should have relied much more heavily on the mail? And what about all the folks in all the other Departments/Offices?
The only fair way to do this is to do it for everyone. We have 550 employees in Johnson County. If you gave each one $20,000, half the money is gone. Meanwhile, while you have rewarded employees, you have done nothing to improve the resiliency of the County and the public moving forward.
2. In some cases, other choices could have been made. For example, Polk, Linn, and Scott Counties simply required customers to do Treasurer’s Office business online and/or through the mail. There were no riots there. The Iowa DOT was fine with their approach. And they all serve more people than does Johnson County. But Johnson County’s Treasurer fought tooth and nail to keep his office open by appointment. Fine. But then to turn around and claim your employees deserve hazard pay when you could have simply made a different decision?
3. County employees do not need the money that badly when compared to other community needs. I have already fought this fight with some county employees. I know I am the bad guy – I was the Supervisor who spoke out about not giving bonuses. It is truly not fun to be that guy. But here are the facts:
The lowest-paid full-time county employee earns almost exactly $20.00 per hour. That assumes being hired in at the lowest possible level, and not yet receiving a six-month review. So basically, every single employee earns over $20 per hour. Several earn MUCH more. In addition, county employees have really good health insurance at a very affordable price. There are plenty of other benefits (sick leave, vacation, several holidays, etc.). And to top it all off, county employees are invested in IPERS, a well-managed defined benefit retirement program. County jobs are pretty good jobs. And I’m proud of that! I have worked my tail off for many years to make it so!
The statistics back me up. The very lowest possible county pay of $20 per hour is about 33% better than the median income for a single person in Johnson County ($30,486 according to the US Census). The poorest County employees fare much better than the average county resident. Average County employees do MUCH better. While I appreciate the efforts of my coworkers, they are not needy by any measure.
4. Extra money for county employees is not effective stimulus. I caught Hell for saying this, too, but it is true. As I noted before, most county employees are not in great financial need. They are compensated quite a bit better than the average county resident. So what happens when they get an extra $5000 or $10,000 dollars? Yes, there will be some splurging. But a whole lot of that money is going to be saved. And much of the spending will be done at Disney or other vacation locales.
Poorer people, on the other hand, are fixing cars, buying shoes and clothes, and buying more food. That money stays in our community and recirculates many times over.
My colleague Jon Green tweeted a while ago that we had “failed” county employees by denying bonus pay. Obviously, Jon is entitled to that opinion. Needless to say, I disagree. In the same Tweet string Jon notes that there was insufficient funding for most of the requests we received. Well, imagine how much less the poor in our community would be getting had we spent a few million on employee bonuses! I think one could fairly argue that had we given bonuses, we would have “failed” the poor. And I am not going to do that.
Additionally, random bonuses are not how you care for employees. You do that every day by negotiating fair contracts and upholding them. You do things like my recent efforts to add 5 days of vacation to beginning employees at no additional cost to them. Or Royceann’s efforts to add Juneteenth as a holiday without taking away another day. The constant small efforts to make things better matter. They do not grab headlines, but they require a dedication to our employees.
ARPA is that incredibly unique opportunity to make everyone hate you. I know many County employees hate me for it, but I could not justify giving them extra pay in a county where 19,000 people are food insecure.
In the next installment, we will discuss funds for excluded workers.
*Unsubscribed from Salvos?
I have had subscribers to Salvos occasionally find themselves knocked off the list. Unfortunately, a friend of mine has had trouble with this lately. Here is a little background, in case it happens to you.
When I first started sending this, people weren’t victimized as frequently by spam. But as spam became ubiquitous, email servers began refusing emails that go out to large groups. My weekly email goes out to about 500 people, and that number has barely changed in twelve or thirteen years. Each year approximately ten people drop off, and approximately ten new people join.
Anyway, I was having to send about 25 separate emails of about 20 names each. It was becoming unwieldy. Obviously, I was not alone, because then these “mail services” popped up. I use Mailchimp, because it is free. And it has made doing this 100 times easier.
The problem is, Mailchimp is very sensitive to the spam issue. (Makes sense; it is the environment in which they were created.) So a person can ask me to unsubscribe them, and I do. If they want to be added back in, I can add them. But if a person unsubscribes themselves, Mailchimp does NOT allow me to resubscribe them. They assume the person wants no more email from me.
So if a person accidentally unsubscribes themselves, Mailchimp will not allow me to add them back. They have to resubscribe themselves. I think the easiest way to do that is Google the word “Blogger.” Go to that site. Once on Blogger, search for Sullivan’s Salvos. It should show up, and allow you to subscribe.
I am really sorry about any hassles! Thanks for reading!
*DID YOU KNOW? The postal code for the state of Iowa, IA, uses the first and last letters instead of the first two, so it doesn't get mistaken for a number 10.
Anyone interested in learning more about County government should take a look at the County website-
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---Rod
posted by Rod Sullivan @ 10:28 PM
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