Mr. Cheapskate

  • Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Several years ago a political candidate approached at a public event. "Why won’t you support me (for Congress)?" asked he. "Well, having the audacity to sue your county commission for more money than they were willing to give you doesn’t help your already marginal creds." responded I. 

Candidates can be a disappointment. They all make promises don’t they. We have those like Congressman Chuck, esquire, who promise the moon knowing they can’t get squat, or to cut frivolous expenditures as he promised, and the best he’s done was that first year in office when he went out to replace real working people on their jobs… costing each a day’s pay in the process. To him, Congressman Chuck, esquire, real working people have jobs in grocery stores and convenience stores and fast food restaurants. They most certainly do, but when did he see fit to venture out to work where we common schlubs wear hard hats, hazmat suits, and steel toed shoes? Gosh, that would have been like a kid wearing cowboy boots hanging his campaign signs on the fence around some National Cemetery breaking a sweat. We’re still waiting for him, Congressman Chuck, esquire, to take action on that budget deficit he’s run so hard on during each campaign, aren’t we.

This is kind of like riding a bicycle. 

Even more disappointing are elected officials who do well as stewards of our treasure in one office, those TaxBucks We The Peeps work so hard to earn only to have them confiscated by the revenuers, with the force of a government gun, but when they’re elected to another office they turn into spendthrifts like nobody’s business. One who comes immediately to mind is my Manipulative Leadership bud who promised to cut expenses in his new office, then after being elected turned around and requested humongous budget increases for even greater salaries to the hired help, hired help with salaries already being questioned on the watch of his Democrat predecessor. Others have done likewise, increased budgets instead of cutting them, but few to the tune of 100s of thousands of taxpayer dollars. 

And those Republicans, the party of the rule of law and living within our means, it’s a good thing their majority can stand back pointing fingers at Democrats for lying, assuming undue and unearned credit, conflicts of interest, "good old boy" deals made in the back room, misleading voters with half-truths and misinformation, and using taxpayer dollars for their personal feel-good projects. Take, for example, the Hamilton County Commission. If we eliminate Commissioners Fairbanks, Fields, Haynes, Graham and Boyd we have a majority who can do exactly that… point a bony, accusatory finger at those who have, uh, ethical challenges. 

Welshers. 

Here we are at the secondary apex of election season. County elections, state and federal primaries are coming up this week and it’s time to either fish or go home. How do we determine which candidate is best for our society, the one who will govern best for every citizen, and the one who’ll do so without prejudice toward his buds? 

I have personal guidelines, the basis of which are our state and federal Constitutions. Both documents are written in common language, so the common man and woman can read and interpret them as written. For such relatively short documents they took a long time to write for a reason, to eliminate ambiguity. There’s no interpretation necessary, nor intended. How do we know that? A living, breathing document wouldn’t require a method for amendment and our Constitutions have clearly stated procedures for amendment if clarification ever becomes necessary. It doesn’t take an Einstein to understand their mandates, merely someone who can read. Uh, we’ll save reading by the end of third grade for another day. 

I go a little further because some will attempt to tell us it’s unreasonable to believe employees of the taxpayers can not only operate efficiently, but do so being cheerful and courteous to We The Peeps, the ones who pay their salaries. We’re constantly told "We need more money." and, quite frankly, that’s a bold faced lie. 

Man, this is gonna hurt. 

Let’s take, for example, the Hamilton County Juvenile Court Clerk, one Mr. Gary Behler, an admitted immigrant from Pennsylvania. That was a long time ago and I checked his papers when he ran for office back in 2010. He’s run on a platform of efficiency and cutting costs before requesting any more money. So far he’s been rather successful at that goal. 

This is beginning to get uncomfortable. 

First up was to improve customer service in the child support office. Those of us who’ve been required to work with them in the past know what a nightmare that could be, from both sides. So, what does Mr. Behler do? 

Most of us, perhaps excluding the radicals in the alternate lifestyle community, have been to Chick-fil-A in the course of our lives. The Cathy family are rather persnickety about the quality of both customer service and chow… except our Gang don’t use the drive-through lane any more. So who better to go to for training than a company with a reputation known far and wide for great customer service? That’s exactly what Mr. Behler did, went to Chick-fil-A and contracted with them to come do customer service training. 

Out here in Realville, the land of profits and losses and returns on investment, there’s a saying; you have to spend money to make money. I submit this is miss-worded and should be; sometimes we have to spend money to "earn" money. 

Those Feds… they get so pithy when we print our own. 

Mr. Behler first spent a little taxpayer money to move his office from paper, with filing cabinets stacked on top of one another that had to be manually searched if archived information was required, to a computerized system. But there was so much paper in there already they couldn’t even set up a network while re-organizing the office layout. I’m sure he immediately became a hero to treehuggers by moving from killing trees to merely inconveniencing a few electrons, but this effort also cost less money and enabled employees to more efficiently search for information when needed. Time is money. 

Next he set about to develop software designed around their needs and requirements in the clerk’s office. County Mayor Coppinger deserves a partial Attaboy for suggesting Behler use in-house technogeeks. So he formed a fire team of geeks composed of Bart McKinney, Alan Gaston, and Darren Combs, Combs being the guy with the big pocket protector. Working with former Juvenile Court Judge Bailey, then her successor Judge Philyaw, including magistrates McDougal and Clark, with input from those actually having to use the system, Behler and Company have developed a software system that’s not only streamlined operations in the Juvenile Court and Juvenile Court Clerk’s office, but has saved money in the process. 

I’m beginning to get a case of the vapors. O’Doul’s, maybe an O’Doul’s will help. 

So, here’s Mr. Cheapskate (Behler) having done what he promised when he ran for office. He’s improved efficiency in office, saved money, saved time which will ultimately allow for fewer employees in the office… including the attendant decrease in salaries and benefits, and if they’re smart they’ll be able to lease this system to other clerks’ offices on a subscription program and additionally save those tax dollars We The Peeps work so hard to earn. Where’s the problem with any of this? 

But it also begs several questions, doesn’t it. 

Why hasn’t anyone else ever taken similar initiative? Why have tax dollars merely been spent for software and/or systems that not only don’t work but are just thrown away and replaced with other systems that don’t work either? 

Why couldn’t this gang, Mr. Cheapskate and Company, build a similar team to address Tennessee Department of Education testing issues? Golly, that would keep money at home instead of sending it to North Carolina, produce a system that actually works, and there’d be some accountability instead of just wee-weeing away millions of taxpayer dollars… dollars we work hard to earn. But maybe that’s the problem, it would save money and they’d have to give some of it back to those who earned it. 

Well, I don’t guess that hurt too badly… no worse than my first tooth filling, back in the days before Novocain when we had to tough it out. I probably didn’t cry any more than during that experience either. 

Royce Burrage, Jr.
Royce@Officially Chapped.org

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