November 04, 2007
Sewer of Corruption (XLV)
The King County Council is considering an ordinance to add yet another $0.01 per $10 to the sales tax "for the delivery of mental health and chemical dependency services, and therapeutic courts".
Councilmembers (including some fiscally conservative Republicans) argue that this program will be more cost-effective than keeping drug users and mentally ill people in the county jail [But if it saves money, why raise the sales tax? -- Ed.]
The scandal here is that under the ordinance the mental health services could only be provided through private employers that are pre-approved by a labor union. Thus granting to the SEIU a veto over the provision of pubic services and enormous license to extort concessions from service providers. This is unprecedented and astonishingly corrupt. But Ron Sims and the Council Democrats all approve.
Republicans who otherwise support the ordinance are disgusted by the proposed union veto, as is even the P-I.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at November 04, 2007
11:32 AM | Email This
1. The P-I editorial included a confusing paragraph: "We understand Sims' explanation Friday that this provision is required because of the difficulty in union organizing. The county may be caught in a hard middle spot. Pressured by Councilman Bob Ferguson, SEIU and Sims made concessions in the draft and are willing to negotiate further. Good."
I wonder what Sims's explanation was. If "difficulty in union organizing" merely means that employees don't want to join the union, well, that's the union's problem. On the other hand, the P-I, after blasting the union provision, implies that it might have some merit, yet doesn't elaborate. Is there some unusual situation involving the union here? I wish the P-I had been clearer. Any chance that someone on SP can objectively present both sides of this argument?
2. King County Progressives are afraid of competition. And they love nepotism. These mentally ill people should be in private care. The only involvement from government should be in paying private care to manage any wards of state. And that should be wholly decided by competitive contracts. In fact, it would better to simply randomly draw a provider from a hat, than to let the council get involved where there will be some back scratching.
3. Why dont we just make our paychecks direct deposit to King County. Thats where were headed
and we could just be done with it. Hey Shark, can I borrow some gas money?
4. Amazing what these corrupt people try to pull.
5. Out here in New York they play a similar game where the County requires bidders on contracts to sign a Project Labor Agreement. This of course excludes any non-union bidders since they will not be able to meet what is demanded for a Project Labor Agreement. The whole point is to make sure that no government-related work can be done without labor endorsement.
This raises the cost of Government but the local voters really do not get a straight explanation of what these PLA's are all about.
6. Every time they raise the sales tax here, I just look for more ways not to buy anything at all in King County.
For every dime they raise my taxes, I make it a point to take a dollar out of their Pork Chop pockets.
Keep loading up the sales tax King County, and soon all shopping will be done outside of King County!
7. The people passed a Veterans and Human Services Levy and you hired about 22 people to over see the tax money. So now you will increase the sales tax "Again" I guess there will be more people shopping out of the county. Their crazy. Time to down size council to 7.
8. I think the majority of the "new" programs the Ds are going after should be into the aging "boomer" population, including health and care of the aged.
Otherwise, keep things as they are.
Bruce, I took the union thing to be the problems the unions have in getting WalMart unionized and thusly being in the position to ruin one of the best privately run corporations in the world.
9. "Thus granting to the SEIU a veto over the provision of pubic services"
Leaving out the "l" in public makes that pretty funny.
10. The county has close to 16,000 current employees, have more jobs to be filled by looking at their web site.
I wonder what the ratio of county employees to county tax payers is, and how that compares to other governments.
Seems to me allot of existing waste and now more taxes to support even more waste.
I heard from a reliable source at the county that the new sewage treatment plant, in Snohomish county that will cost $2B, is totally being mis-managed and not even needed. They said the Renton plant is way under capacity due to all the water conservation done over the past 10 years, and the last current flow analysis was done in 1998?
Seems the county needs a "real" internal audit before it gets to raise more taxes.
11. How similar is this to the SEIU putting several state legislators up to signing a letter drafted by SEIU, #1199 and sent out, in the case of State Senators, on STATE LEGISLATURE LETTERHEAD to a private organization implicitely threatening it with denial of state funds unless it caved to the SEIU POV in collective bargaining?
Labor thugs at work again...
The Piper