Is Jack Markell Fighting His Ongoing War Against State Employees By Himself?
8-ball sez: Signs point to ‘yes’.
From 2008 to today, Governor Jack Markell has never, repeat, never, proposed a raise for state employees and retirees. He has, on several occasions, proposed shifting costs from the state onto the workers and retirees. Jack Markell is a putative Democrat. When it comes to who gets rewarded and who gets shafted, he might as well be Mitt Romney. He has governed like a 1%er through and through.
Markell’s latest attack on workers and retirees first surfaced in this News-Journal article by Jonathan Starkey. Following his seventh consecutive year of not proposing any pay increases for state workers, Jack Markell once again went after employees’/retirees’ health plans:
The latest source of unrest: the governor’s proposal to raise employee health care costs while offering no general pay increase for state workers in his $3.9 billion budget.
Delaware state workers and retirees could face $1,000-deductible increases and higher co-pays for specialist visits, hospital stays and prescription drugs to help close a $60 million health plan deficit, according to administration proposals submitted to the State Employee Benefits Committee.
Another proposal would reduce benefits for pensioners on Medicare by implementing 5-10 percent co-insurance provisions in Delaware’s Medicfill plan, a change that would result in new out-of-pocket health care costs for seniors.
Top state officials have even discussed eliminating coverage for erectile dysfunction pills, a benefit used by 3,413 health plan members, to save $2.7 million.
In essence, the state would place an additional $41.2 million burden on employees and retirees in the form of higher deductibles, according to the article. No pay increase, and higher health care costs. Why does Jack Markell hate state employees?
BTW, you remember the State Employee Benefits Committee, don’t you? That’s the committee that, up until recently, had no state employees on the committee. Well, unless you count the gaggle of Markell cabinet officials and other bureaucrats who stack the committee and rubber-stamp his proposals. Remember the titanic battle between Markell and the General Assembly when it came to actually having a state employee subject to the Governor’s whims and caprices on the committee? The General Assembly proposed two, the Governor proposed a big fat zero. The ‘compromise’ was one. Hardly enough to stop Markell’s war on state employees from succeeding.
Which leaves…the Delaware General Assembly. The Joint Finance Committee pushed through a (to be kind) modest pay increase for state employees and retirees a couple of years ago. Against the governor’s wishes.
Did I neglect to mention that Markell never bothered to clue legislators in to his latest intentions, even though he plans to push these measures through to balance his budget? Consider it mentioned.
From this follow-up article in the News-Journal:
Delaware House Speaker Pete Schwartzkopf and House Majority Leader Valerie Longhurst wrote a letter to Markell on Monday saying they were unaware of the administration’s plan to pass additional health care costs onto state workers to close a $60 million deficit in the state health plan…
“We have serious concerns about the impact this proposal would have on the people we all rely upon to make state government run, particularly the thousands of workers at the low end of the wage scale,” lawmakers wrote in the letter, which was also signed by Democratic House Majority Whip John Viola.
The lawmakers said the proposals were not “formally presented to legislative leadership or the Joint Finance Committee, despite the administration’s apparent reliance on the plan to balance the fiscal year 2016 state budget.”
I need hardly point out that there are other ways to raise revenues or cut costs, ways that Jack Markell has consistently dismissed. Like requiring his 1% pals to pay their fair share. They’d leave Delaware, he has said, if forced to pay their fair share. Better to try to screw the people with whom Markell has no affinity. State workers and retirees. Maybe Jack would cut his bloated and useless Department of Education down to near zero if he wasn’t so intent on destroying public education, but I digress.
I hereby apologize for my support and volunteer efforts on behalf of Jack Markell in 2008. I helped to elect an arrogant prick who, as governor, has afflicted the afflicted and provided comfort to the comfortable. I thought he was going to do the opposite.
Members of the Delaware General Assembly, it is up to you to correct my mistake (I’m also trying my best). State workers are the backbone of state government. They deserve a living wage and reasonable benefits. Do right by them. The Governor hasn’t, and the Governor won’t.
Tags: Delaware state employees, El Somnambulo, Featured, Gov. Jack Markell, Steve Tanzer Delaware
If this was playing out 15 years ago, be might be forgiven. The galling part for me is that the trickle-down economics and supply side Chicago school bullshit that Jack Markell clings to so ferociously has been so thoroughly discredited and debunked.
It works like gangbusters if your goal is wealth redistribution upwards, and that is clearly Jack’s goal.
It used to be people would work for the state at lower salaries because of the good benefits. The way it’s going, good state employees will leave for the private sector and only the mediocre and worse will work for the state.
Let’s improve education by selling it to corporations while undercutting those who actually do the hard work in public schools. Solid plan. So glad the unions endorsed him…twice.
It is a good point. The DSEA needs to do a better job vetting candidates.
My wife is one of those state employees and has been for almost 10 years. Her W2 made me cry, and they weren’t tears of joy. She’s basically slave labor with a nice health care plan and some extra holidays.
I see a bigger picture. I see that all of us, (or our parents) used to think it quite acceptable that if you spent 40 years of your life, and saved a little of what you earned and let it accumulate interest, that you would be entitled to live off that in your retirement.
The change occurred in the 80’s. When select conservative judges decided that, well, no,… that money does not belong to those who put it in there, “until” they take it out… The basis for that was that if they died before cashing out, that money would not go to them.. So therefore it must belong to the corporation who manages the plan until it is withdrawn.
As soon as that happened, you had corporate hawks swooping on and buying up companies to bankrupt them, and steal the pension plans because they did not belong to the beneficiaries anymore.
Now for the state, it is all about taxation… By robbing the pension plans, the one percent can continue to pay less tax…
The silliness behind that argument is that the top 1% has never made more money in their lives. This begs the question as to why those people depending on pensions after they retire, now have to take a further hit, so those at the top can earn even more….
It gets worse when you figure out how such a plan sucks gigantic sums of money out of the working economy… by taking it out of those who would spend it daily around our state, and putting it into those hands who not only don’t spend, but send it out of the country…. where it does no American any good ever again.
It is time to start raising a cacophony about taxing the top.. Actually it is slightly way past time. A simple argument to initiate the discussion would be to ask: what worked well in the 50’s? Let’s tax the same rates as they did then. Then, it is up to the Norquists to spin in the wind with a noose around their neck as they try to explain how the frustration 99% of Americans now feel today is better for all of us, than when everyone in every income percentile, got wealthier year to year, back when the top marginal rates were 90%..
And they could retire in comfort too.
A cacophony would be nice. I’d say that Democratic voters have to be absolutists when it comes to picking candidates and reject any candidate that is soft on taxing the top. We have to be strident and unrelenting about getting candidates on the record, and VOTE AGAINST THEM if they are lacking.
I know that makes everyone queasy because (God forbid) a Republican might be elected. But that’s how it is.
“erectile dysfunction pills, a benefit used by 3,413 health plan members, to save $2.7 million.”
Fun With Numbers
Is that for real? That’s an average of $7,910.92 per person. At a WalMart price of $29.67 per tablet, that’s about 266 pills. In theory that would be an average of 266 instances of um…coitus per year.
Come on, something is off there. Does it take more than one pill? Forget about older folks, is anyone that randy? I hope that’s not the expectation because even when I was in my prime, I would have never come close to that standard. This doesn’t pass the Ho Ho test.
The cost isn’t per pill. It’s for making everyone eligible for taking that pill.
Eh? You mean even if no one took the pill it would still cost $2.7M? Sort of like a retainer? I dunno, I’m finding it difficult to understand that kind of health care contracting. I guess I would have to see the details of the contract to comprehend how they arrived that number.
@jason–you’re arguing the process strategy that has worked well (in short-term outcomes) for the Tea Party. Support only candidates who hew to the selected line; primary every “establishment” candidate in your own party regardless of what that costs the overall balance of power. After about six years of chaos, the Tea Party is very close to achieving its goal of complete control of the Republican Party, primarily because they worry about their causes, not the need to win every election.
You do have to wonder why the “Elizabeth Warren” wing of the national Democratic Party or the progressive wing of the Delaware Democratic Party can’t do the same thing.
called the gov’s office re his loving of the corps and disinterest towards the folks. Lady who answered said she has a hard time trying to explain why gov takes such positions.
i was raised a MA Demcocrat and I can’t believe what passes for a Democrat in this state!
We have few elected Democrats here…we had Dixiecrats for a long time…now we have Corprocrats and Carpercrats.
“You do have to wonder why the “Elizabeth Warren” wing of the national Democratic Party or the progressive wing of the Delaware Democratic Party can’t do the same thing.”
Progressives are completely cowed by the conventional wisdom that a “bad” Democrat is better than ANY Republican. Tea Party Republicans do not suffer from the inverse version of that delusion.
Liberals and Progressives took the wrong lesson away from Gore’s defeat. They think the loss was due to Ralph Nader and not Gore’s lackluster, wishy-washy campaign. It was TOTALLY due to Gore’s lackluster, wishy-washy campaign.
The State is basically broke. With that being said where is the State supposed to get the funds to pay higher wages? Raise income Taxes?
Delaware’s house of cards are starting to topple..
From a TNJ story two days ago:
Since mid-2009, Gov. Jack Markell’s administration has committed $213 million to companies for jobs-related grants and loans through the Delaware Economic Development Office’s Strategic Fund.
That’s $35 million a year on average. Lots of room there for a salary boost, especially for those earning Wal-Mart level wages.
As to the rest of your argument, have you seen the financial shape in which the Republican Corbett left your much-admired Pennsylvania? Delaware’s residents are among the most lightly taxed in the nation.
2.7 million on viagra? How about hair growth drugs? How much does the state spend for that prescription? Anyone think our Gov has used any of that? I didn’t vote for him either time.
Among young state workers I know, some are looking to get out. The bullshit and disguised pay cuts are too much. The older people are resigned to their fate – they need the pension and are just hanging on. Morale among my friends working for the state is incredibly low. They understand the overall financial situation is rough, but they are getting beaten up from both sides – from the public who thinks they are lazy parasites and from their governor who thinks that it’s OK to nickel and dime them. New initiatives are getting shot down for lack of funding, good projects are being trimmed, and there’s more work for fewer people to do because of how deep Markell slashed the workforce early on. All while Jack refuses to consider any sort of revenue increase except his beloved gas tax.
@Tom Kline
“Delaware’s house of cards are starting to topple”
Do you live your entire life as Chicken Little? One can be too sanguine about the future to the point of being an ostrich but still, the sky is always falling? It must really suck for you to wake up every morning and still be alive.
@ Geezer: Funny how that story got BURIED in the News Journal. To put the burden on the DPL customers was wrong. Some of our elected officials who voted for it said; “if I read it, I would not have voted for it.”
Why was there NO return on investment?
Why are they not held to their requirements & not penalized for not meeting them?
Oh, that’s right there is not enough DEDO employees!!!
@Tom Kline, the teachers get their raises every year, as do the cops and . I have nothing against teachers and only a little against cops, but when have their unions accepted pay cuts? And our corporate hack governor is the eighth-highest paid governor in these United States. (knowledgecenter.csg.org/kc/content/csg-releases-2013-governor-salaries)
But somehow our non-unionized state employees are expected to shoulder the burden of balancing the budget.
University educated science majors at the state make like 30K. There are no steps or raises except cost of living which is rare or small. Many people I know are in the 20K salary range and that’s gross pay. Think they have another 100 bucks a month to lose?
I seem to remember a 27th pay a few years ago that Markell approved. That was a nice little bonus ‘eh?
Joanne you don’t know the half of it. He didn’t cover the local shares of the school districts for that pay; he didn’t cover ANY of the costs to DSU or Del Tech. The 27th pay is an artifact of the 2-week pay system that comes around every 12-13 years, and for which the State never plans ahead to meet. Moreover, it mostly only affected people who were on 9-month contracts, like teachers and college professors. Our administrators (the ones who had to make the decision to fork out the extra money from their own budgets) did not face a pay gap. Rather than being considered a good point in his favor, the poor way in which this was handled should be enlightening.
Oh I was there Steve. And don’t forget those furlough days…..
State employees took a proposed 8% paycut from this Czar and fought against this regime to end up with a 2.56% cut in salary around 2008-2009.
The 27th pay was a joke. Most people don’t realize that even though it only happened once, it was budgeted into the state budget in future years. How slick to gain 41 million more each year for other stuff at taxpayer expense.
The state budget was at 3.3 billion when he entered office. It’s 3.9 billion now. Can he get it above 4 billion by the time he leaves office? He’s hell bent on it.