Full Board
Good morning. I’m once again commenting on the resolution from Public Health to abolish 19 positions, reclassify one, and create four new positions. There’s been no compromise, looking at the rewrite, just smoke and mirrors. I’m sure the vacancy committee felt bludgeoned to death after listening to this bureaucratic gibberish for two hours. The only part of the resolution which should be approved is the creation of a full time physical therapy position. There’s no new organizational chart that we can refer to, or job descriptions, or staffing data chart. The abolishment of positions will be dealt with during budget preparations. Vacant positions don’t cost anything, so this isn’t actually any kind of bargain. There has been absolutely no discussion of how Public Health lost 1/3 of its staff or about how to fill those vacancies. None of these changes restart the services to the public which have been halted.
I especially object to the reclassification of a position to reward a close friend of the Director, someone who only has a bachelor’s degree and only just qualified for the position she holds, into a classification which is meant for senior Management employees such as Department Heads and Commissioners with a minimum of a master’s degree. Why do we keep lowering our standards? Look at the errors in this month’s Public Health report if you want to see what happens with underqualified staff; it was handed in late and parts of it are illegible. The DFS salary is already $40,000 more than I got for doing the same job 8 years ago, and the duties have not increased. You can’t keep giving management raises when other staff are going to tighten their belts, to say nothing of the layoffs at the ACC.
As I stand here, I’m speaking for the Public Health staff, past and present, who have contacted me over the last two months. I know they’ve also spoken to their legislators about their traumatic experiences working under a petty tyrant, and their fears of ...
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