8-ball sez: Signs point to ‘yes’.
From 2008 to today, Governor Jack Markell has never, repeat, never, proposed a raise for state employees and retirees. He has, on several occasions, proposed shifting costs from the state onto the workers and retirees. Jack Markell is a putative Democrat. When it comes to who gets rewarded and who gets shafted, he might as well be Mitt Romney. He has governed like a 1%er through and through.
Markell’s latest attack on workers and retirees first surfaced in this News-Journal article by Jonathan Starkey. Following his seventh consecutive year of not proposing any pay increases for state workers, Jack Markell once again went after employees’/retirees’ health plans:
The latest source of unrest: the governor’s proposal to raise employee health care costs while offering no general pay increase for state workers in his $3.9 billion budget.
Delaware state workers and retirees could face $1,000-deductible increases and higher co-pays for specialist visits, hospital stays and prescription drugs to help close a $60 million health plan deficit, according to administration proposals submitted to the State Employee Benefits Committee.
Another proposal would reduce benefits for pensioners on Medicare by implementing 5-10 percent co-insurance provisions in Delaware’s Medicfill plan, a change that would result in new out-of-pocket health care costs for seniors.
Top state officials have even discussed eliminating coverage for erectile dysfunction pills, a benefit used by 3,413 health plan members, to save $2.7 million.
In essence, the state would place an additional $41.2 million burden on employees and retirees in the form of higher deductibles, according to the article. No pay increase, and higher health care costs. Why does Jack Markell hate state employees?
BTW, you remember the State Employee Benefits Committee, don’t you? That’s the committee that, up until recently, had no state employees on the committee. Well, unless you count the gaggle of Markell cabinet officials and other bureaucrats who stack the committee and rubber-stamp his proposals. Remember the titanic battle between Markell and the General Assembly when it came to actually having a state employee subject to the Governor’s whims and caprices on the committee? The General Assembly proposed two, the Governor proposed a big fat zero. The ‘compromise’ was one. Hardly enough to stop Markell’s war on state employees from succeeding.
Which leaves…the Delaware General Assembly. The Joint Finance Committee pushed through a (to be kind) modest pay increase for state employees and retirees a couple of years ago. Against the governor’s wishes.
Did I neglect to mention that Markell never bothered to clue legislators in to his latest intentions, even though he plans to push these measures through to balance his budget? Consider it mentioned.
From this follow-up article in the News-Journal:
Delaware House Speaker Pete Schwartzkopf and House Majority Leader Valerie Longhurst wrote a letter to Markell on Monday saying they were unaware of the administration’s plan to pass additional health care costs onto state workers to close a $60 million deficit in the state health plan…
“We have serious concerns about the impact this proposal would have on the people we all rely upon to make state government run, particularly the thousands of workers at the low end of the wage scale,” lawmakers wrote in the letter, which was also signed by Democratic House Majority Whip John Viola.
The lawmakers said the proposals were not “formally presented to legislative leadership or the Joint Finance Committee, despite the administration’s apparent reliance on the plan to balance the fiscal year 2016 state budget.”
I need hardly point out that there are other ways to raise revenues or cut costs, ways that Jack Markell has consistently dismissed. Like requiring his 1% pals to pay their fair share. They’d leave Delaware, he has said, if forced to pay their fair share. Better to try to screw the people with whom Markell has no affinity. State workers and retirees. Maybe Jack would cut his bloated and useless Department of Education down to near zero if he wasn’t so intent on destroying public education, but I digress.
I hereby apologize for my support and volunteer efforts on behalf of Jack Markell in 2008. I helped to elect an arrogant prick who, as governor, has afflicted the afflicted and provided comfort to the comfortable. I thought he was going to do the opposite.
Members of the Delaware General Assembly, it is up to you to correct my mistake (I’m also trying my best). State workers are the backbone of state government. They deserve a living wage and reasonable benefits. Do right by them. The Governor hasn’t, and the Governor won’t.