TOM'S TALES FOR THE WEEK
Submitted to Shelton Blog by Tom Davis Mason County Progressive
There was no Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) briefing or meeting this week, but there’s still a lot to be said about the events of last week.
What happened was a rude reminder that Mason County Commissioners are deliberately misleading the public. There have been many examples of callousness toward citizen concerns, but pretending to consider rolling back commissioner salaries and then not doing so marked a new low and here’s why:
In no other position is it permissible to engage in activities unrelated to one’s duties and still claim full compensation, but that is exactly what occurs with Mason County Commissioners; feathering your own nest and currying favor with special interest is not what we pay commissioners to do.
Tim Sheldon says we need to keep commissioner pay high to attract talented people, but that is just a ruse to inflate his own salary and future retirement benefits. The question we should be asking is do we really want to attract people to public office because it pays well? I don’t think so. We need people who come to serve, not be served. County Commissioners should make a living wage, but this is the public sector, where service and sacrifice is the proper measure of good governance, not high salaries. As it stands, many of the highest paid positions in the County are in local government.
Is $96,655 in salary and benefits too high compensation for a Mason County Commissioner? The answer is yes and no. No, if there is only one commissioner, but yes, if you have three people doing the same job, as is the case here. Based on duty mandates and local conditions, yearly salary plus benefits for a Mason County Commissioner should not exceed $68,000, or about one and a half times the local median household income.
If any elected official thinks they deserve a salary over twice that of the people they serve, let them go to the private sector and leave the noble premise of public service to people who really believe in it.
Finally: Tim Sheldon has made a career out of burning the same party bridge over and over again. A risk-taker, though not in the usual sense, Sheldon walks a thin line between duty and improbity, daring anyone to challenge his authority, and manipulating the local political process to turn government against itself.
Sheldon likes to think of himself as something of a “maverick”, and there’s little doubt that he’s strayed far from the herd. But it’s not like Tim Sheldon is out there by himself fighting the good fight for God and Community; he simply roams back to his own herd from time to time and thumbs his nose across the aisle. Be that as it may, there is little doubt Mr. Sheldon has long ago bought into his own snow-job.
No matter the results of the current election, there are those who will continue to fight for better representation at the local level. Admittedly, the job would be easier if we did not have to battle through another four years of Tim Sheldon, but history tells us there is no shortage of political power ponies trying to pull down the tent, so we might as well get used to it.
Later…
Thumbing Your Nose Pin: tace.com
Once again Tim sheldon parrots utter non-sense. If high pay results in obtaining talented people and we accept Tim as the exception to the rule, then we have to look at virtually every publicly traded company and ask, with wages for CEO's literally thousands of times the highest paid productive worker, why is the economy in the shape it's in? Afterall, with all that high paid talent we should be up to our necks in jobs, have a chicken in every pot and two cars (paid for) in every garage. But that isn't what we have. We have corporate welfare where the lowly workers bail out the businesses and all but a handful of businesses lobby for kick backs, special tax treatment, TARP funds, record rates from the Federal Reserve, and subsidies and government contracts, while the "talent" squanders the shareholders money, use shareholder funds for PACs and lobbying, and looks for ways to increase options, pay and bonuses. If Tim were right then explain the millions in legal losses he is responsible for. Maybe what we need is to pay less? Paying more is clearly not working.
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