“…Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows”.
Leonard Cohen- “Everybody Knows”
While Leonard Cohen wasn’t talking about the choices that the Markell Administration has made in this year’s budget, he very well could have been.
As the Joint Finance Committee peels back more layers of this rancid budgetary onion, we see the priorities of this administration, and what we see is an ostensibly progressive administration time and time again comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted.
Here’s what we’ve learned so far, with more examples surely to come as the JFC continues its hearings:
The Governor:
“…followed the recommendation of DHSS and proposed cutting $4.5 million in cash assistance for a adults who are unemployable, destitute and sometimes homeless. About 3,500 single adults receive checks of about $94 each month (corrected in the N-J) through the welfare program, according to DHSS.”
The Governor, according to Judgepedia, proposed:
“a 3.6% pay raise for the state’s 19 Superior Court judges. The pay increase is scheduled for a year when nearly all of Delaware’s 17,000+ state employees are facing a pay freeze. The increase would bring the annual salaries of 18 associate justices to $174,950 and President Judge James T. Vaughn, Jr. to $185,750.
The reasoning behind the raise is an effort to correct a “mistake” made in 2004 when Chancery Court judges received a pay increase over what the Superior Court judges were earning. Prior to 2004 the two courts were compensated at the same level. Superior Courts hear criminal cases, while the Chancery Court hears cases regarding financial issues.
Those who recommended the 2004 Chancery Court pay increase however, deny that it was an error, saying that the Chancery Court handles “more complicated” cases and warrants additional compensation.
The Governor is aided and abetted in this transparent attempt to ‘comfort the comfortable’ by the out-of-touch upper crust on the News-Journal editorial board, who wrote:
Gov. Jack Markell is on solid ground here to call for the 19 Superior Court judges to be brought up to the same salary level as vice chancellors, which accounts for a 3.6 percent increase. That’s not a budget buster in a state operating statement of $3.4 billion. It’s only about $157,000.
Got it? It’s not a budget-buster, so they should get the raise. Forget about the fact that they’re already making close to $150K a year, and that virtually all other state employees will get no increase, if indeed they’re fortunate enough to keep their jobs. Besides, these self-appointed ‘leaders’ all go to the same cocktail parties and social functions, so the Editorial Board just knows how tough it is to make ends meet on $150K annually.
In the wake of our state’s continuing economic hard times and considering the dire situation many Delawareans find themselves in, it verges on policy pornography to deny the ‘unemployable, destitute and sometimes homeless’ $94 a month in Medicaid assistance while giving financially-secure judges a raise that they don’t need. Yet that’s what Jack Markell proposes.
It got even worse at the end of last week. We had read that Markell’s budget would result in the following:
“The University of Delaware, Delaware State University and Delaware Technical and Community College would share a $6.52 million reduction in their annual appropriation.”
Guess what? Now we know where some of those cuts are coming. They’re not coming out of operating budgets. Hell, the University of Delaware, which gets millions upon millions of state dollars every year, isn’t even required by law to make public how it’s spending those dollars. It’s not coming out of Lonnie George’s bloated salary as the highest-paid Delaware state employee. No, the State instead proposes to break a solemn promise that it made to students struggling to afford college. The inevitable result is that fewer students will receive $1300 per semester needed to attend school. Why? The overrun to the SEED Program is about $800,000 to $1 million over the projected $3 million annual budget. Forget about the fact that students took the state promise on faith, worked to get their grades up to the level needed to qualify, and worked to ensure that, once eligible, their grades would enable them to continue to receive the funding.
The state is breaking its promise, pure and simple. Budget Director Anne Visalli says:
“If you were to have an unlimited admission, then you would have to come up with the money to fund the program,” she told legislators on JFC. “What we’re saying is, ‘Don’t admit students above the $3 million.’ … The appropriation in the budget should match the admission.”
Of course, it’s not an ‘unlimited admission’, it is available to only those who qualify. Except that now, thanks to the Markell Administration, it won’t be available to all those who qualify.
And what does the high and mighty News-Journal Editorial Board have to say about this? The same out-of-touch self-styled opinion-makers who support raises for judges kiss off needy students thusly:
Will some potential scholarship honorees be overlooked by the schools, yes. But saving money in government operations is not always pretty. SEED and Inspire are both worthy and helpful to the future education of young Delawareans. But the money cannot be considered infinite when budgets need cutting.
First of all, no one is considering money infinite when the shortfall to fully-fund these scholarships is between $800,000 and $1 mill. That’s chump change in a $3.4 billion budget. And, second, once again, no other options are even mentioned by the News-Journal nor, for that matter, the Governor.
The News-Journal concludes by saying that “(t)hey (the General Assembly) also should pledge to restore the scholarships to all who qualify when the economy and state budget turn around.” The judges, of course, shouldn’t have to wait.
What both the Journal and the Governor willfully ignore is that the relative cost to preserve essentials like Medicaid funding to our most vulnerable and scholarships for those who would comprise the “21st Century Workforce” are relative pittances.
These and other important priorities could easily be restored if only the Governor exercised some political will and insisted that those who have flourished financially, while scores of others have floundered and fallen, actually share some of those ill-gotten gains for the public good. By eliminating the flat tax for the fortunate few, by adding maybe two or three more income brackets at the top end, say at $100K, $250K, and $500K, many truly needy and deserving Delawareans will be helped. Instead of telling qualified students that they’ll get their scholarships when and if the economy turns around, how about telling the billionaires on the hill that their obscene tax breaks will be restored when and if the economy turns around? Maybe some of the fat and happy plutocrats might even feel moved to create a job or two under that scenario.
What the Governor is proposing is inequitable. He is proposing that nobody with ample financial means should have to sacrifice at all and some, like judges, should be immune in these hard times. Rather, students, the unemployable, the indigent, and the homeless, will simply have to tighten their belts.
I hereby call on Governor Markell to either revisit these priorities and/or to at least state publicly why he expects everybody but the well-to-do to share in the sacrifice.
I expect it of the News-Journal board, I did not expect it of Governor Markell. Does he really want his legacy to be: “He comforted the comfortable and afflicted the afflicted”?
Coming tomorrow (Well, maybe not, I’m currently scouring the Delaware Code for the pertinent statutes, but they’re not where logic would dictate they should be): In taking the Governor at his word that he will consider any and all ‘good ideas’, I will propose yet another way to help the state generate revenue with absolutely no cost to anybody…well, almost anybody.