Feeling the heat

The Patriot News has a report on how state workers are dealing with not getting paid.

To state workers on the brink of personal financial disaster, working without pay is a little like serving jail time for a crime for which someone else was convicted.

Kiana Williams, a first-year audio/video specialist in the court system's administrative office, wasn't hired to bring legislative leaders together to debate program cuts or higher taxes.

Lisa Burton, a clerical assistant for the court system and a single mother of a child in college and another in high school, has no say over bridging a $1 billion gap between the administration's spending plan and what Republicans are willing to spend.

Such state workers suggest that they've done their jobs just fine, yet they're the ones facing unpaid paydays and up to 800 layoffs. They're the ones facing overdue bills and contemplating whether they can feed their families through food banks.

"We're working hard every day, yet we're the ones caught in the middle," Williams said.

Dave Fillman, executive director of Council 13 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said workers feel like pawns in an unnecessary game.

"The commonwealth employees should not be facing something like this," he said. "The elected officials have fallen down on the job. The one thing we expect them to do each year is pass a budget, and they can't even do that."

So while the legislators continue to battle it out, the ground-level workers fume on their lunch breaks.

"They know every year this budget is coming, but they wait until the last minute to do something," said Mary Smith, a programmer for the court system. "In the private sector, they'd be fired."

Why do Pennsylvanians continue to put up with this type of shoddy treatment?  I'm sure that if our politicians' jobs were the ones on the line, they'd be working non-stop to get a budget passed which wouldn't impact their job status. 

I'm telling you, the best way to fix this annual problem is by using smoke-and-mirrors.  Seriously, we move the so-called-budget-deadline from June 30th to April 30th and keep the fiscal year's starting date at July 1st.  This way, when the inevitable happens (the politicians missing their budget deadline), they'd actually have two months to work out a final budget. 

Something to think about...