… because he might as well fiddle while Florida — at least its economy — burns down around him.
Just take a look at section B of the Palm Beach Post today. The front page of the section alone has three articles about the drastic measures Palm Beach County and its municipalities are having to take in order to contend with the cuts in revenue caused by the heinous Crist/Rubio tax cuts.
At the top:
With the office’s budget cut 6 percent this year and projected to be slashed another 10 percent for the year beginning July 1, career prosecutors are jumping ship, too. The latest: Homicide prosecutor Patrick McKamey. His last day on the job is Friday. McKamey is joining the criminal defense law firm of Perlet & Shiner, where he will make more than the $80,000 he’s paid as a prosecutor.
Husband and wife Heidi Perlet and Marc Shiner also are former Palm Beach County prosecutors, as is another attorney in their firm, Darren Shull.
McKamey, 40, has been a prosecutor for nearly 12 years. With no pay raises or cost-of-living increases for two years, McKamey said he has taken a pay cut when inflation is factored in.
“When you get to that crossroads financially, you start losing ground,” McKamey said. “I made the financial sacrifice as long as I could to do something I love. It was a hard decision. I struggled with it for months.”
McKamey is married with a 2-year-old son, and he said that was a factor. “If I were still single, I could have weathered the storm.”
Earlier this month, Michelle Marken quit the office after about seven years. She too blamed the lack of pay or cost-of-living raises now and in the foreseeable future. Marken was making $67,729 and prosecuted difficult crimes against children cases, in addition to arson cases. She has gone to work as a prosecutor in Virginia.
“This is the second year we’re going to be stagnant,” said Al Johnson, a 15-year veteran of the office. “Basically, there is no future in the state of Florida in the state attorney’s office – that’s what the legislature is saying.”
[...]
“You cannot put a three-year prosecutor in crimes against children,” Johnson said. “Patrick’s caseload doubled in the last three weeks.”
It could get worse before it gets better. In order to make payroll if next year’s budget is trimmed 10 percent, [State Attorney Barry] Krischer says he will have to lay off some attorneys. This on top of other experienced prosecutors he lost in recent months. Among them: Stacey Ibarra, who went to the statewide prosecutor’s office, and Jennifer Millien, who joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
[...]
[T]here were 5,131 active felony cases as of April 14, including 2,141 that were 6 months old or older, Johnson said. “The less time you can devote to each individual case, you’re going to see more cases fall through the cracks. We cannot concentrate on every case.
“The public is suffering now. They just don’t know it yet.”
These are real consequences, folks: the real effect of the few hundred dollars that Crist and House Speaker Marco Rubio have put back in a few Floridians’ pockets (mostly wealthy homeowners who don’t really need the extra cash).
Want more evidence?
Palm Beach County schools will need to cut $36 million from its budget next year after legislators approved the 2008-09 education spending plan they plan to finalize on Friday.
The cuts amount to a 2.7 percent budget reduction, slightly better than the state average.
Florida would spend about $130 less on each of its 2.6 million public school students next year [according to] the state budget. In Palm Beach County, the per-pupil cut would be $117.
[...]
District officials point to school districts such as in Broward and Miami-Dade counties that drew up multiyear contracts promising rising salaries to teachers.
Now those districts may have to go back on their promise or lay off teachers to make ends meet. Miami-Dade Superintendent Rudy Crew already recommended the school board suspend raises negotiated two years ago.
It’s the same thing that happened in the early 1990s, when Palm Beach County schools had to renegotiate its contract with teachers after it couldn’t afford promised raises.
Okay, so let’s see what the damage is so far: we’re sloughing off law enforcement personnel left and right, our public schools are suffering cuts they can’t afford, and attorneys and teachers alike are losing or are at risk of losing their jobs. Nice work, Charlie!
But wait — there’s more!
Facing a difficult budget process in the coming months, the city should consider freezing employee salaries, combining the police and fire departments and dissolving the community redevelopment agency.
The recommendations were among the dozens of cost-cutting ideas residents offered at a small forum Tuesday night at the Delray Beach Golf Club.
[...]
Delray Beach, like most Florida cities, is bracing for a bloody budget process this fall because of a decrease in tax revenue from the voter-approved property tax amendment combined with a failing economy and stagnant housing market.
The city must approve a budget by the start of the new fiscal year, Oct. 1.
Kucera urged commissioners to spend wisely and find small ways to increase revenue, such as increasing parking fees. Other residents proposed increasing the fines for driving and code violations, charging user fees for parks and using the tennis complex for more events.
We shouldn’t have to do this, Charlie, not in an already sluggish economy. And we likely wouldn’t — at least not to such a great extent — but for the hard-on you and Marco have for burnishing your Good Republican Credentials (an oxymoron if there ever was one) by pushing through tax cuts the state neither needs nor can afford.
Let me put it more simply, Charlie: you are slowly strangling Florida. Is that what you want your legacy to be? You can be the governor who forced Florida into bankruptcy! Congratulations, Gov. Crist!
I can see it now: Tallahassee, 2011. “Sorry we don’t have a gold watch to present to you as you head off into the sunset, Charlie, but here’s a hearty pat on the back for burying the state in mountains of debt. You did more to destroy the state in four years than Jeb! could do in eight. Way to go!”
The picture’s not much better in the rest of the country, thanks once again to Republican asshats making the decisions in Washington. Why, just look at the Post’s Business section, starting on pages 10B and 11B of today’s paper. The headlines alone are sick-inducing:
(featuring a graphic headed “Confidence free-fall”)
Sounds just peachy, doesn’t it? I know, I know … no one could have predicted that we’d be paying nearly $4 a gallon for gas and having stores ration flour and rice and … well, that’s a bunch of bullshit, and Charlie, you know that as well as anyone. What the fuck were you thinking, pushing tax cuts in the midst of a recession that threatens to become a full-fledged depression?
We’re going to remember this, Charlie. And I for one won’t let you forget.
(cross-posted at Blast Off!)
