Public workers getting a bad rap

By Jon Ralston

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 | 2:01 a.m.

So what can we do with all these overpaid government workers who rake in more than the poor slobs in the private sector here?

Here’s an idea: Let’s take away their cost-of-living raises and caricature them as indolent, two-hour-lunch-taking, useless slugs.

Everyone onboard?

Before the train leaves the station, though, let’s take a look at the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce’s study on public employee pay that was released this week, just days before lawmakers are scheduled to return to Carson City to find a way to bridge a $250 million budget chasm. The findings were stark: 28 percent higher public pay than private compensation, ranking Nevada eighth in the country.

The Democrats have been seeing a lot of black helicopters circling lately, with some still implying the Economic Forum cooked the numbers to help the governor’s case for the special session and now surely believing the chamber released the study showing high public sector wages to provide cover for slashing COLAs on Friday at the special session. Next thing you know, they’ll allege some conspiracy between the chamber and the Las Vegas Review-Journal to make a huge deal out of the study on the front page and downplay the aspects that don’t help the chamber/R-J case that government employees should have their salaries lowered — in lieu of a lethal injection, I suppose.

Truth be told, the chamber commissioned a series of studies by Applied Analysis and Hobbs and Ong, two reputable firms, months ago and the timing is coincidental, albeit unfortunate for those workers and the Democrats. The business group has long promoted a so-called “government reform” agenda — in this case, “reform” means showing government to be fat so they don’t have to feed the beast with any of their hard-earned money (money apparently earned by paying workers less than the public sector does).

So the chamber’s motives here were relatively honorable and the group has raised serious questions about how much state and local government workers are paid, and will soon have other information that bolsters its contentions about benefit packages and the ominous, multibillion-dollar shortfall that lawmakers so far have ducked.

But before the “take the money from the sloths” train gets too revved up — and it’s hard to argue the raise repeal shouldn’t at least be discussed because it is such a huge chunk of money ($130 million) that could be saved — there are two points embedded in the study worth considering, too:

• Nevada teachers, who make up three-quarters or so of the state workers whose raises could be rolled back, “reported average wages that were 6.5 percent lower than the national average,” the study said. Somehow the chamber news release, headlined “Nevada government workers should be castrated,” buried that little finding and portrayed it as “93.5 percent of the national average.” An inconvenient truth for the chamberites warming up to the idea of rolling back the COLAs. (By the way, the real headline wasn’t THAT bad: “LV Chamber releases reports revealing public employee pay 8th highest in U.S.”)

• The size of the government workforce is exceedingly low. Indeed, at 41.4 public employees per 1,000 people, Nevada ranks 51st, the study discovered. “Higher relative workloads, should they exist, may lead to higher compensation levels,” the study said. Higher workloads? For government workers? Aren’t those numbers men funny?

The chamber’s conclusion is that public sector salaries are out of whack and, as Government Affairs Chairman Hugh Anderson put it, “right-sizing these numbers is a critical part of a long-term solution to expenditure reform.”

Really? Would the chamber folks argue that if a private sector company were paying its workers more but operating with fewer employees than a competitor, the company should cut those salaries? And does the chamber not conclude that the public sector here, clearly already strained by growth and woefully understaffed compared with other states, may actually be getting a bang for its big bucks?

It’s simpler to take a one-sided approach and suggest our tax money is being wasted on lazy bureaucrats and those teachers earning — wait for it — 93.5 percent of the national average!

I say pull the raises and tell them they ought to be happy they have jobs. And if they decide on layoffs, the good news from the study is we can’t possibly fall any lower when it comes to per capita government workers. And I’m sure the services — from local governments, from state government, in the classroom — will be wholly unaffected, too.

So all aboard the cutting train. Don’t get left behind when it departs Friday from Carson City.