Well, folks, they whimped out - just as we all knew they would.

Yes, folks, 3 out of 5 commissioners caved in tonight to the demands of the 347 or so county employees on the health plan and said to hell with the other 99.9 % of us taxpayers who do not work for the county. No changes to the health plan - NONE. The county budget passed as presented. I'll give full details of who said and did what tomorrow. I've got it all written down. I'm just way too damned disgusted at the moment. All but two of them MUST GO. We cannot afford these gutless wonders any longer. Wednesday, 7/3/2009: Good morning. During the first public comments section last night, three county employees - well, two current and one former - spoke to the proposed, exceedingly modest changes to the health plan. The first was Chris Gobel (sp?). He stated that he had had no salary increase in 11 years. I assume he meant that no one had had a salary increase in 11 years. If that is true, that is deplorable and a separate issue from health care which needs to be addressed - and in fact should have been addressed last night. He went on to say something to the effect that any change in benefits or premiums would be seen by the employees as a repudiation of the value of their work by the commission. The threat of retaliation at the polls hung heavily in the air. Next up was former tax commissioner Brenda Wainwright. She suggested that the employees had been deprived of "input" in the decision to make two cost saving changes and the first rate increase since 2004. When was the last time your boss checked with you before changing the health premiums where you work? It turns out that, believe it or not, there exists at the county government an "insurance committee" comprised of administrative staff members and rank- and-file employees. Wainright went on to speculate that if the committee had a say and the risk manager embarked on a campaign of going around to each department and personally pleading her case to all of the employees, why, the employees might just come to agree that they were paying way too little. Oh, yeah. That has obviously worked in the past as evidenced by the current sweetheart premiums. Lastly, Jimmy somebody, apparently the #2 dog in the tax assessor's office, also opined that the risk manager (Staci Bowick) needs to embark upon a comprehensive explaining and listening tour to solicit the understanding of all of the employees. Is that how it works where you work? Apparently, county government is not run so much like a business as it is a sheltered workshop. I hope you've had your breakfast already. Sickening, isn't it? When the time came to vote on it, the first crack in the dam came from Charlene Rebecca-of-Sunnybrook Farm Sears. She owhined that it just wasn't fair to the employees to not give them six months to a year to get used to the "idea" that a rate increase was coming. She said that she rarely gets any calls from anyone in District 4 on ANY issue (I wonder why?) but had gotten tons of calls on this issue. Not only did the calls come from whining county employees, but, according to Sears, from dozens of concerned and empathetic citizens concerned with the plight of the pitiful employees. Therefor, she made a motion to table the whole health care issue until January of 2010. When St. David, Patron Saint of Good Ol' Boys, called for a second, there was a long, pregnant poise. Finally, Berry broke the silence by seconding the motion "for purposes of discussion." Berry subsequently did not have much to say on the issue, but Keene spoke very eloquently on behalf of the best interests of the other 99.9 % of us who do not work for the county. Had he been addressing folks with spines, it would have been effective. Rainer then chimed in with his classic, beady-eyed, mealy, mumbly-mouthed explanation of how there was really no rush to make the changes and that the poor employees had not been allowed to have any input in the decision. Keene countered that it was the responsibility of the commissioners, not the employees, but to no avail. Zell clucked out a few timid and unmemorable utterances telegraphing that she was prepared to go with the flow. Rainer went through the laughable charade of harrumphing that the employees should clearly understand that there would have to be a rate increase of some amount NLT January and that they should prepare themselves for it. Keene then called bullshit on him by calling for them to vote in the changes last night with the understanding that the changes would take effect on January. You should have seen old Mealy-Mumbly Mouth backpedaling. In a last ditch effort, Staci Bowick got up and explained that A, if an employee went to the ER and the medical code for the visit turned out to be one considered a bona-fide emergency (i.e., and acute asthmatic attack), then the the proposed higher ER co-pay (versus current $100.00) of $250.00 would be waived; and B, if you had to go to a specialist and there was not an in-network specialist within 100 miles, the higher out-of-network co-pay would be waived and the lower in-network co-pay would be charged. These are standard features in virtually all PPOs, by the way. Mike Fender got up and spoke in support of making the changes now. All to no avail: the vote was 3 to 2 to table until January. Voting to table it (i.e., do absolutely nothing) until January were St. David, Sears, and Zell. Clearly, they need to go. We can rid ourselves of Sears and Zell as early as January 1, 2011. St. David will take a little longer, but he can be nullified with the right replacements for Sears and Zell. Berry and Keene were in favor of making the changes last night. They are both keepers - and have been for a while now. With regards to the budget, several folks spoke to it. Some Georgia Forestry Ranger spoke in favor of retaining the $4,800 dollars the county had been paying as a "supplement" to the salaries of 4 rangers assigned to Camden. That stayed cut entirely. Of course, Mr. Copeland spoke his personal detailed analysis of the budget. He started at 1822 HRS and finished at 1827 HRS, - a personal best for brevity. When it came time for the commissioners to speak, Berry led off. He gave the audience a lecture about how the problem was not really spending, but a lack of revenue. While he acknowledged that he economic downturn was a real problem, he said that the underlying problem is really the outrageous number of "tax exemptions" that the county has voted for various properties in the county. He said that the exemptions had cost the county $184 million in lost revenues in 2001; $198 million in 2007; and $207 million this fiscal year. He cited the local hospital and all of the 44 nearby medical office buildings as an example. All of that prime property is totally exempt from property taxes as a 501c3 tax-exempt organization. He went on to detail all of the e-mails he had received via his author's website complaining about the proposed health plan changes and the proposed, reduced budget. He strongly defended the actions of the commission and commended the hard work of the staff coming up with the budget. He also launched on the T&G for their failure to do anything but criticize without coming up with suggestions to cure the county's fiscal ills. Finally, Berry lectured Sheriff Gregory, who was in the front row, on how he was just going to have to get by on the+/- $5.8 million the CCBOC was giving him. (Gregory, at the end of the meeting, got up and rebutted Berry's comments, specifically denying Berry's characterization of his statements that he might have to seek a writ of mandamus for full funding when funds run out as a "threat.") Berry also warned that because property values have been frozen for the next three years, in the absence of millage rate increases, there will be very austere budgets for he next three years as well. Sears, who has obviously been reading this blog, quite surprisingly commented that we are in the fix we are in now because in prior years, the CCBOC had cut the millage rate too much. She did not go on to state WHY they (the Terrible Troika) had done that. She talked about how the CCSO would eventually have to be funded, no matter what and how the employees were long over due for a raise. She chewed (when she wasn't literally chewing like an ruminating ungulate on whatever she was eating at the dais last night) all around the edges of actually, emphatically suggesting that they should vote right then and there to increase the millage rate sufficiently to cover the nut for all of FY-10. St. David said a few ass-covering words to placate county employees, then they voted. The vote to adopt the budget as presented and maintain the current millage rate for FY-2010 was unanimous. At the end of the meeting, the new JDA Executive Director, David Keating, got up and introduced himself. His brief statement was far more impressive than the some total of all utterances by his two immediate predecessors. As I told him when I introduced myself after the meeting, he certainly does not have very big shoes to fill. Speaking of introductions, as I was qued up in the line of folks wanting to meet the new JDA director, Judge Lewis introduced herself to me and told me how much she enjoys this blog. Clearly, a woman of discernment, intelligence, and sound judgement.