Our fave newspaper has been pacing to-and-fro with its sandwich board decrying a sinister plot: city commissioners are eligible for the city health plan! Great Ceasar’s Ghost!-- talk about a tempest in a teapot. Some thoughts:
- Treating the city commission as a volunteer position that should not be compensated in any way insures that only the class that has time to volunteer will serve. So long as we do this, we have no right to moan that we’re represented by a bunch of rich slackers.
- Additionally, an ordinary working or middle-class person who served on the city commission might risk income—since the meetings take place at an hour when most of us are working. If you’re going to treat it as a volunteer position, move meetings to a more reasonable hour so that a larger cross-section of society could participate without risking income. Or, alternatively, find ways to compensate members for the potential reduction in income.
- When Robert Keys states that he is enrolled in the city plan rather than his own business’s plan, this says something about him individually as a businessman. It says something about how he treats his employees. It does not indict the entire American political process.
- Irrespective of what I thought of her performance at the time, Dianne Bosch was an example of a city commissioner who was also an ordinary middle-class Amarilloan. She stated that the city insurance was “a help” to her. We should find ways to encourage more ordinary Amarilloans to serve. Close the smoke-filled room!
- We should have universal health-care anyway in this country. Until we do, I couldn’t give two flips how people find ways to cover their families.
SPACEDARK
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