WyBlog

I want a job working for Union City, NJ government

The name "Union City" is strangely appropriate. The public employee unions in the Hudson County municipality really have a sweet deal.

School bus drivers are allotted 5 hours of guaranteed overtime each month to recharge their cell phones.

Now a new audit from the State Commission of Investigations reveals that each and every public employee in Union City receives one day of paid leave to go Christmas shopping.

Your tax dollars at, er, work?

Unfortunately, Union City is but a blip on a pattern of rampant waste, fraud, and abuse uncovered by the SCI audit. Cash-strapped towns are crying poverty while their public employees continue to make out like bandits.

"The gravy train continues to roll without impediment for select groups of employees on the public payroll," it reads. "Startling amounts of taxpayer-funded booty continue to be dispensed across New Jersey without regard for the common good."

The largest excesses cited come from retirement payouts to the law enforcement community. Unused sick and vacation time, accumulated over 20 and sometimes 30+ years, is disbursed in a lump sum at retirement. And to add insult to injury, the payouts are calculated at the employee's current salary, as if he had used all those days off in his final year of employment.

"Terminal leave." That's a good one. Only in New Jersey can a union man retire before his retirement date, collect a full salary, and then hit the sick-day-buyout lottery and collect a fat pension. (Oh, and get free gold plated health benefits for life, too.)

Nice work, if you can get it.

Our public employee retirement system is grossly underfunded, but that doesn't stop the spendthrifts in Trenton from putting private lobbyists on the public dole. Everybody's got their fat fingers in the taxpayers' pie.

For this my property taxes go up 10% a year? It's time for a taxpayer revolt in this state. The public employee unions are strangling us. There are far too many leeches sucking on the public teat. The only way to kill the beast is to starve it to death. We're facing an $8 billion state budget deficit next year. How about we just don't pay it? Cut $8 billion out of government, at all levels.

We can start by telling the denizens of Union City to shop for Christmas presents on their own time. Or, would that be too much of a sacrifice for them to make?

Posted at 10:31 by Chris Wysocki   [/nj_politics]   Comments | Archived | Perm Link |
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