UNIONS: Abuses OK'd by taxpayers

I'd like to express my disappointment in your reporting of the "State of the Union." The manner in which you allowed those concerned to spin their numbers was not only misleading but outright deceptive. My blood boils every time I see the terms average and comparable.

I challenge any entity supported by tax dollars to compare their "averages" to the rest of wage earners in Kootenai County instead of statistics that support their positions from outside our immediate area. Better yet, why not go back to these same spinsters and request they provide information on the last 10 people they retired. Years of service; final pay scale, per year or hour; amount paid for benefits, health and PERSI; accrued vacation/sick time and amount they were paid at separation; and monthly retirement income. We can do the rest of the math. Let's not forget they will also receive their Social Security.

We taxpayers are the guilty parties responsible for allowing these bloated abuses to abound. At what time did working for the government turn into an upper middle class position? They are no more important to our communities than the rest of the "average" people that have much more dangerous, demanding and needed jobs.

Try to find a company today that has a pension plan. Guaranteed, the best you will find is a matching 401K (or similar) at a paltry 3 percent match. PERSI may be fully funded today but continue on an 11 percent contribution course and your fate is already written. You must think we're all idiots.

Government's response to date has been to cut current services to taxpayers with furlough days, increased class sizes, tax increases and program eliminations. A few have implemented tiering new employee pay and benefits as the only reasonable long-term solution. Across the board pay reduction, removing COLA's, suspending automatic pay increases that exceed inflation, and at least some benefit sharing will help to accelerate an effective return to normalcy.

PETER WARD

Spirit Lake