[Mikey_1962]

Will:

San Francisco recently reported that 184 of its employees made at least $30,000 apiece in overtime in the first half of this year. A nurse at the county jail made $128,000 in overtime, putting him on track to top his total 2007 compensation of about $350,000. Nice work if you can get it, and you can get it in many places.

[Lynne]

I believe that in New Jersey they can bank unused sick time also.

[tcostell]

This is a prescient article. An economic slowdown is going to reduce the tax revenues of local and State government. In the meantime the civil service unions have been running amok spending money like crazy in the belief that if they ever needed more they can just go "take it" from the taxpayers. This It will get much worse as the local government's credit worthiness becomes an issue, and since the credit crisis has cut into the credibility of bond insurers, it will be harder and more expensive for them to borrow. Our politicians lack the ability to say no to spending in both parties, and fiscal discipline in government is considered a quaint relic of a time long past. I mean, how are you going to save the planet if you don't spend money right?

Here in New Jersey we're ahead of the pack, being the worst offender on per capita spending, and being number 2 in per capita debt and taxes (at least until you add in property taxes... which puts us way out in the lead as number one). We also have a powerful civil service union that is the uncontested queen of the capital, after having literally been "in bed" with the governor. No one, but no one confronts the civil service unions in government. Whatever they ask for they get. no benefit or increase is ever denied them if there is any way a politician can hide or justify it.

If you want to see what the future is for your state... look to New Jersey. Right now our tax and spend Democrat governor is trying to pass off ideas like raising the tolls on the garden state parkway to $40 dollars each way, and using creative financial tricks (sort of a Special purpose vehicle for government) to let him borrow more money than the state constitution will allow.

The whole place is a fiduciary mine field and the bill is about to come due. I'm betting they'll be forced to take a serious look at insolvency and east German style confiscatory taxes. As it the population is in free fall. We have more people escaping over the Delaware every year than they had fleeing east Berlin. And there ain't no printing press in the treasury department of a state government.

This is the future of local government.

[decimon]

FYI, unless you are George Will, you have wrongly attributed the article.

[4yearlurker]

Here in Monessen,PA.,the local newspaper headline read:”Monessen running out of money.” When I read that headline I grabbed my wallet.

Monessen homeowner=cash cow.

[Senator John Blutarski]

Well, it appears that we have finally reached the bottom of the cornucopia.

The unions will discover that harsh economic reality trumps all their political power and influence. Like all institutions, they have abused their power for too long and their entire house of cards will come crashing down around their ears.

[flowerplough]

Coming to a city near me? Ain’t no city near me. Spend and burn, baby, spend and burn.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

The problem here is demographics.

After the decriminalization of chemical abortifacients [Griswold -v- Connecticut] and surgical abortion [Roe -v- Wade], Caucasian Americans [especially in the Blue States] stopped having live births.

Now there are no young Caucasians to purchase the houses of the aging Caucasian boomers, and there are no young Caucasians to fund the retirement pensions of the aging Caucasian boomers.

S*** hits the fan circa 2020, when the entire system will collapse and implode [or explode] into Goodness only knows what.