If what follows doesn't make you mad, then what hope do we have for a return to sensible, transparent, caring, equitable government that truly serves all?
When Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker pushed through his Act 10 law gutting collective bargaining for most public employees in the state, some of the most aggrieved workers were unionized state prison guards, who have seen few raises in recent years along with two years of compensation cuts under Walker. The guards must deal with an increasingly large and unruly prison population despite declining resources. That's produced one huge morale problem for corrections officers in the state's overly incarceration-minded justice system.
So how to fix that? Well, these passages in a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story today pretty much sum up the Walker administration approach to "better" government:
Six prison wardens locked in pay raises of 8% to 13% this week — bringing their pay to just under $100,000 a year — at a time when most correctional officers and other state employees are getting 1% pay raises... .If the above wasn't bad enough, two other aspects make this injustice even worse. For one thing, the Walker administration engineered the fat pay increases to the wardens by, as it has done previously, using an administrative loophole that let the increases be much higher than normally allowed. The State Corrections Department simply transferred the wardens from duty at one prison to another. Under Walker, musical chairs is the game that produces unwarranted, double-digit pay increases."This is naked cronyism," Paul Mertz, a correctional officer at Redgranite Correctional Institution, wrote in an email to the Journal Sentinel. "We have one standard for all the unwashed masses and another standard for the beautiful people."
Just as awful, one of the highly rewarded wardens has a history of physically mistreating his staff and uttering racial epithets. This became known ten years ago when a staffer filed a whistleblower report. The warden was never disciplined, but the whistleblower was reprimanded and suspended for his actions. You can read the nasty details at the link to the Journal Sentinel story, above.
So, apparently, if you're a right-thinking Wisconsin state government manager, serious misconduct in public office may get you a big, fat raise and no punishment. It's more proof that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Join me below the little orange cloud of backroom cigar smoke for further thoughts.