Pay raises send wrong message
by Jim Beam - The American Press (excerpt)

Public officials at every level of government have lined up for pay increases at the current session of the Louisiana Legislature. Apparently the state’s $3 billion surplus has visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads.

You would think they would at least wait to see whether hurricane-weary homeowners would finally get some financial relief from the now-infamous Road Home Program. Those folks have been waiting over a year and a half for repair and rebuilding grants that are now uncertain.

The Road Home Program has received nearly 135,000 applications for financial assistance, and it faces the prospect of coming up as much as $4 billion short. Only 16,000 awards have been made, but another 60,000 have had their grants calculated. However, that still leaves nearly 60,000 other homeowners wondering whether there will be any money left for them.

Spokesmen for all of these groups will tell you their proposed pay increases don’t amount to much money in the overall scheme of things, or that they don’t involve state funds.

Maybe not, but it’s the message these bills send to taxpayers like the 60,000 who don’t know whether they will get any Road Home money, or at least get enough to put them back on their feet. And although it isn’t state money in some cases, the proposed raises are still coming from taxpayers at the local level.

Some reasonable raises may be merited from time to time, but they should never be automatic or dependent on what some other group of public officials is being paid. Every public official should stand on his or her own two feet.

Public officials should also understand their interests are secondary when the future of thousands of their fellow citizens is still so much in doubt.