Lately, when I read a piece in my local newspaper, in which some pundit or politician is yammering about the need for state workers and pensioners to “share in the sacrifice,” my general response can be summed up in one word: SERIOUSLY?
I sacrificed a fat pay check out of law school more than 22 years ago, when I took a low-paying, “at will,” state job defending poor people. I never heard anyone in government or the press clamoring to raise my salary to a level even remotely commensurate with that of my counterparts in the private sector, who, not incidentally, never seemed to tire of berating me for undervaluing my services. In fact, over the length of my career, my real income actually went down. In the last three years of my state job, my salary was completely frozen by the government, and I took five voluntary furlough days, so that the younger workers would not have to be laid off.
Since I started working for the State in 1988, my government-funded health insurance went from good, to so-so, to crappy, to “take it or leave it.” Oh, right! My required contributions to health insurance premiums, co-pays, and out of pocket expenses went up as fast as the quality of care went down. This became a series of sacrifices, always advocated by pundits and mandated by politicians.
In the last ten years, I sacrificed my pay, my benefits and my pension, because I loved my job and because I had finally fewer years of work ahead of me than behind me. Sacrifice is supposed to come as second nature to a die hard public defender. I taught so many Ivy League debutantes to practice law in the trenches of the criminal justice system and kept fighting as most of them ran away literally crying and screaming from the office, because their refined sensibilities were not attuned to the stress of the 55-hour weeks and the dead bodies and the unscrupulous police and prosecutors and sanctimonious judges and the often mentally unstable, addicted, and sometimes dangerous clients. The job was not for the faint of heart. There has been a 51% turnover rate in the public defender system in the last three years. Go figure! Colorado politicians always got way more value from their public defenders than they deserved, yet each year, we would have to beg for the minimum amount of money to do a job which they knew full well was mandated by the U.S. Constitution. Politicians and the press knew that we carried 2-3 times the case-load recommended by the Colorado Supreme Court, but they just looked the other way while we continued to make the sacrifices necessary to do an impossible job.
The last ten years is important, because, during that period of time, both the national and Colorado Colorado
About four years ago, I was asked to sacrifice my relatively stable metro position, for a double caseload on the Eastern plains. Since there was no money for an actual office I sacrificed by driving 80 miles from my home to court, each way. My office was a Jeep, a lap top, and a cell phone. I became the first permanent public defender in a jurisdiction that had previously suffered from a mish-mash rotation of “du jour” attorneys. My last four years in that position were by far, more challenging and rewarding than my preceding 18 years in a metro placement. Many of the police and prosecutors had seemingly never heard of the Constitution, and some of the judges had a nasty habit of putting way too many people of color in prison. No, we never got along, but I was consistently and truly appreciated by the folks whom I was lucky enough to represent. It was a huge sacrifice and it was worth every minute.
About a year before the middle class got the bill for bailing out the criminals on Wall Street, there was a Colorado government/press hue and cry about the allegedly “dire fiscal crisis” awaiting (in 20 years or so) my state pension plan. I was told by the same politicians and pundits that I again needed to sacrifice in the form of larger worker contributions, astronomical buyout figures, and cost of living increases that were no longer tied to the actual cost of living, but tied instead to state revenues, (ie. no increase at all).
I sacrificed every day, for 22+ years and borrowed money to buy a few more years from my pension plan, before the government completely cut that off too. Now that I have finally and fully met my end of the contract to PERA and am taking the pension THAT I EARNED, I am told, by the same politicians and pundits that I have it too good, like I am a corporation on welfare or something. I sacrificed every damned day and now the same politicians who balanced their yearly budgets on my back for 22 years are telling me that I have to “share in the sacrifice?”
Though I am on a pension, I still pay federal and state taxes and would not mind paying more in taxes, so that potholes and bridges can be repaired, children can be fed and educated, our neighborhoods can be kept clean and safe, and the right to decent, affordable, healthcare can be extended to all citizens. I would be willing to sign on for that additional sacrifice, as I believe in the responsibilities concomitant with the social contract all tacitly sign and share in as citizens of this country and of this state.
The fact that state workers are among the few who still have jobs with something resembling benefits has nothing to do with the end result of 10 years of unbridled corporate greed and government’s fiscal mismanagement. We were not the cause, and it is simply unconscionable to make us more than a small part of the solution. Rather, it is the time for the politicians and pundits to stop this pointless, mean-spirited blame game and begin a serious discussion about what we all know must be done.
J. Brandeis Sperandeo
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