MIping
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Posted on 03/29/2011 1:59:50 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
To plug the budget holes, Mayor Virg Bernero has proposed drastic spending cuts, including:
Laying off 78 police officers from the city's 245-member force, including 11 detectives from the investigations unit.
Closing three of Lansing's eight fire stations and slashing 71 fire department positions.
Eliminating all neighborhood watch and school liaison officers.
Shrinking the number of code enforcement officers and housing inspectors.
Slashing $4 million for sewer, road and parks maintenance.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
It’s always the cops and firefighters. If they laid off 150 social workers, it wouldn’t make the news.
might as well get rid of all the cops on the south side, they can’t seem to do anything to stem the violence there.
Social workers would be state but I don’t doubt that plenty of those will be looking for work soon.
Paper pushers don’t perform essential functions and the public will never feel the effects of laying them off.
It’s just non-verbal politician-speak. “Look, see, you taxpayers, we have to cut the budget to the point where no one’s safe anymore!”
It’s an unwritten law of political life that useless bureaucrats CANNOT and MUST NOT be cut from the payroll.
Why not lay off an equal number of overpaid lardass administrators, instead? People might like that too much?
Foreshadowing of the state of the state.
That ploy is so common it is hackneyed. Liberals scare the bejeejus out of the populace and they become terrified of losing fire and police protection so they cave and beg for tax increases. I see the Mayor has proposed tax increases in the same breath with the announcement to “lessen the impact” of the layoffs.
If he was serious I’m sure he could find functionaries aplenty the city could do without but it’s not about actually dealing with the budget problems. It’s about getting the public to fall in line.
I see the prison at Muskegon is closing too. The short lived ‘ship in an inmate to keep a guard employed’ program is ending.
Who makes up the public worker unions? note there will be less services and higher taxes.
Bernero has asked voters to support a property tax increase that he says will allow the city to keep some of the police and fire department positions, according to the Michigan Messenger. The mayor is also seeking concessions from the Lansing’s public worker unions that could lessen the severity of his proposed budget cuts.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/lansing-to-layoff-cops-and-firefighters-2011-3#ixzz1I1Ztk4o3
MIping
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Never the water, sewer, secretary pool, dog catcher, tax assessor, social workers, planning commission or park maintenance workers that get the axe, just firefighters and police.
Seems the voters must have p*ssed him off in the last elections and this is how they’re getting back for reducing THEIR budget some.
The Tenth Amendent can be effectively nullified by the federal government’s sucking up every bit of private wealth it can find, starving state and local governments of fiscal resources, reducing states to a condition of feckless independence. What FDR set in motion is being honed to perfection.
This idiot was the Democratic candidate for governor last fall. Thankfully, Michigan voters shot him down big time.
Middle managers in the library got raises (sarc///)
don’t worry about the gaurds, corrections and state police have unions and leverage that make even MEA look weak.
It is called the Washington Monument syndrome. When you tell a bureaucrat that he is going to take a budget cut he will cut what everyone can see and will miss.
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