There's an article in the Statesman today that is so illuminating about the way things work at the Capitol during the legislative session. The article is written by Dan Popkey and it concerns the relationship between the majority party leadership of the Senate and the House, who are apparently at odds now because the Senate chose to stop the action of the House to block PERSI retiree's COLA.
This validates IPEA's position that we need to replace a few of the Representatives in the upcoming election and it gives more urgency to our call to find good candidates to run against these guys. IPEA would like to see retired or laid off public employees run for these offices because you know how government works, and when these guys bring up really bad ideas, you would have the arguments to stop them and protect not only public employees, but the Idaho taxpayers.
To quote Popkey's article, "Moyle [Mike Moyle, Majority Leader] was so mad he wouldn't speak. . .His beef: The Senate caved to state and local government retirees and didn't have the spine to follow through on a leadership plan to kill a 1 percent cost-of-living increase in their pensions."
Really, Representative Moyle? That's how you're spinning this? The Senate "caved" to the 33,000 plus retirees that now will not vote for you and your colleagues in this fall's election? I wouldn't call that "caving", I'd call that "listening", or maybe "responding" to your constituents.
Representative Loertscher said the same thing. Here's a quote from him in Popkey's article: "You have a few retirees show up out here on the steps of the Capitol and all of a sudden they get their way. It sends a signal that the way you ply the Legislature is go stand on the steps and holler a little bit and we'll fold up." Well, IPEA organized that press conference (even though the Statesman keeps saying it was organized by AARP), and we think that's exactly the signal we want to send. Representative Loertscher, you are a public servant, and its important that you listen to your public, even though it may cause you a little inconvenience or challenge your preconceived idea of the way things should be done.
This cavalier attitude of Representatives Moyle and Loertscher should cause all PERSI members, whether retired or still actively employed, very great concern. It shows that they simply don't care about public retirees once they have gotten all they can out of them during their years of service. And if you're an active public employee, you'd better think twice about voting for either of these guys this fall.
Here's a link to the full article: Idaho Statesman article by Dan Popkey
