Posted on 03/03/2018 4:37:17 AM PST by ilovesarah2012
It turns out it’s tough to give teachers raises when you slash taxes for a decade.
Striking teachers and other public employees in West Virginia have shut down schools across the state for more than a week, flooding the capitol in Charleston each day to rebuke their lawmakers. The workers are demanding significant raises to their stagnant pay and a clear plan to curb rising premiums in the state employee health care program.
(Excerpt) Read more at m.huffpost.com ...
“Although Republicans now control both chambers of the statehouse, the tax cuts that squeezed the state budget were a bipartisan undertaking. Then-Gov. Joe Manchin, a Democrat who’s now one of the state’s two senators in Washington, had urged legislators to pursue the tax cuts in 2006, arguing that West Virginia needed to slash taxes on corporations in order to be competitive with other states.”
ObamaCare continues to destroy everything it touches.
"End ObamaCare!" When exactly is the GOP going to keep this huge campaign promise that got most of them re-elected? Funny how this isn't on anyone's radar anymore.
There’s a lot of other places in school budgets where spending could be cut and the teachers get raises.
There was a situation in one town I know of where the retired district superintendent and his retired wife were bringing in
$100,000 in retirement pay each year for doing NOTHING but being retired, at a time when the average wage was around $50,000 per year.
They earned double for doing nothing, well not nothing, they’d go to FL to their place down there for the winter, that my husband was working for full time to bring home for us to live on.
And that was just one couple. that doesn’t count all their friends that they got cush high paying jobs just before THEIR retirement do they could also live comfortably off taxpayers with nice cush retirement pay.
PATCO
When the idea of a statewide teachers contract comes up again in Maine, West Virginia will be the case study to prove it is a bad idea. Maine’s teachers union has some juice in the legislature but I would fear their power if they could control the schools like this.
Correct. Much of that education money is going to people who aren’t teaching. WV is the state of Entitlement.
We are fortunate to get 2% raises every 2-3 years.
This isn’t about salaries.
It’s about pensions.
It turns out it’s easy to fire teachers who don’t want to teach for what taxpayers can afford.
Years ago I worked on a study of workers comp in WV. Half the state was applying for it and getting disability. Not sure where the current stats are on that
I’m sure its worse.
Correction: Pensions and health bennies. This isn’t a tax cut mess. This is an insanely unaffordable pensions and health bennies mess.
Note to WV public employees: States can’t print money and your taxpayers can’t afford to keep you in the style to which you’ve become accustomed.
first, why do the teachers and state employees deserve a raise?
The Obama/Clinton war on coal severely reduced coal separation taxes that were the most substaantial source of state government revenue.
The result is clearly, unequoiffically, Obama’s fault.
The problem in WV is a ever shrinking population due loss of manufacturing jobs, Zero’s war on coal, always increasing government payroll (city, county & state!), and aging population which means a shrinking tax base. This decreasing tax base has to somehow be reconciled with increasing benefit demands.
What the state needs to get its economy going is some restraints on its rapacious tort attorneys, and the juries who think that they are Santa Claus.
Wouldn’t matter. Even though WV went to defined contributions a few years back, the state is still on the hook for huge mounts of money. And their health bennies costs are skyrocketing.
Teachers unions, like government unions, should be outlawed.
If you aren’t in the teaching profession because you love educating children, get the hell out! And I mean “educating”, not “indoctrinating”.
It's the same ole perspective by 'govmint' employees who think everyone else is selfish and they don't want to pay for important services and such.
I thought it was also about rising health insurance premiums.
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