Let’s start with a very basic factoid that I’ve brought up a time or two this year: $15,080 is minimum wage ($7.25) times 40 hours per week per 52 weeks.
And just 60 days ago State Representative Joe Sanfelippo, before he finally introduced ‘his’ bill, was tossing around $15,000 as a reasonable salary for a part time Milwaukee County supervisor…until someone came up with the per capita income formulation.
Now today apparently Dan Bice and Orville Seymer of Citizens for Responsible Government have decided that $15,000 is an extravagance when it’s the annual board expenditure for travel. $1250 per month, $833.33 per supervisor, 0.22% of the board’s budget…too much money to spend on business related travel. HUH?
Now I am not going to defend every line item outlined by Mr. Bice…nor am I going to dissect who should and who shouldn’t travel.
But I do expect that my county supervisor is going to meet with his/her fellow supervisors from other counties…I certainly would expect that many supervisors if not all would attend the Wisconsin Counties Association conference. I do expect they have a lot to talk about with their peers around the state. There are a lot of advantages for all of the state if the various counties share ideas and discuss related issues.
But with all of the talk about county government reform…and there are a lot of places in county government to find meaningful cost savings or efficiencies…this seems like an incredibly picayune distraction.
“Picayune distraction” is an understatement for this lengthy column in the JS this morning. Is this even worth the ink used to print it? Anyone has worked as a professional understands how important it is to get outside of your own environment and to talk to others who do similar work in other environments. Sharing approaches to problems, comparing methods of implementing plans, getting information on how to increase transparency without impeding governance, many of the challenges of your job can be shared and clarified by talking to colleagues. $15,000 lousy bucks? Are you kidding me? This is worthy of this much space in our daily paper?
Is this just another part of the campaign to neuter the County Board? I have generally had respect for this columnist, but this piece was a disappointment.
So at the IRS standard mileage reimbursement rate of $.565/mile, that works out to an equivalent of 26,548.67 miles driven by the board or 1,474.93 per member. And I’d assume their staffs are included in that figure? Oh, yeah, I forgot to figure in the Chair’s bus fare for her community meets.
Yeah, that piece is a “bit” off target. I mean, shouldn’t the reps be out in the community meeting their constits, AT LEAST, and learning a bit elsewhere as well?
And the two biggest trips were not paid for with tax dollars. What an utterly bizarre article by Bice.