Good intentions, bad consequences

It was in 1979 when the Legislature overrode the governor’s veto to establish the NMI Retirement Fund. It had good intentions, though it fell short of ascertaining solvency. If you have any doubts, the imperiled Fund is reportedly lurching toward bankruptcy and is owed about $300 million by the administration.

The retirement program encouraged a good number of private sector employees to move into the public sector. It’s a very attractive perk receiving pension after 20 years of government service. Such perk didn’t exist in private industries. Add piles of other perks like life and health insurance atop cushy pension pay. It was a factor in what’s now a bloated bureaucracy.

And so we have a self-inflicted monstrosity headed into bankruptcy territory with no sense of direction except plunge into the sea of deadly red ink. Those who have contributed to the demise of the Fund are either gone or defeated from public office and won’t be back to wash their dirty laundry. Perhaps they too are pondering their fate when their pension funds stop coming.

We once had lots of money from the garment and tourism industries, enabling over $256 million in annual government budget. Such isn’t the case today. Those days are gone and we are now choking with debts, not to mention a dysfunctional government that can’t navigate its way out of bankruptcy. It’s the result of walking the red carpet of persistent negligence for over three decades.

The adolescent idea that unprecedented affluence will roll on forever must have caused a certain lassitude-weakness or disinterest-to nurture it. It paralyzed local resolve to the hilt. This paralysis leaves key players dazed at the disaster piling before their eyes. We got drunk, fat, and stupid, too! Well, what rude awakening after years of singing White Christmas when everything around us is green.

The superficial culture of perpetual affluence took its permanent hold and it takes more than muriatic acid to remove the ugly mold of leadership deficit and deficit spending found all over the floor. It dims the future of posterity who quizzes: Is the microcosm in the Wildfire of Hopelessness the trophy for our future?

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Rubbing salt on injury

Adding salt to injury, public sector employees receive higher wages by as much as three dollars compared to private industry employees. It makes a government job much more attractive where real skills and qualifications are trashed. It isn’t what you know but who you know. So what’s the purpose of the scholarship program?

Private industry employees-whose taxes pay for lots of public sector employees-had to slug and slave it out. They had to earn their dues while drone public sector employees head to coffee shops to join marshland reed scientists liven up the rumor mill. The system punishes the educated and returning scholars while rewarding the useless bunch in the public sector that draw bi-weekly unearned loot.

About the only honest employees are teachers, some police officers, nurses, and doctors. Teachers plan their daily lessons, take on parental roles when kids come into the classroom, ensure proper behavior, and have tons of tolerance to attend even to the slow ones in class.

Doctors and nurses had to work with what’s available 24/7. Some may not have good bedside manners, but they stick to duty and responsibility and know their jobs like the back of their hand. I ought to know for I’ve been to the ER several times. Amazing the work they put in and still go home to their families ready to pitch-in where mom or kids need help.

Definitely, deficit spending would persist. If such is the case, isn’t it good fiscal policy to begin trimming excess baggage to spare private industry and their employees shouldering the cost of paying for wages and salaries of drone public sector employees? Fiscal reality check is imperative!

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Do we have proactive government employees ready and willing to help the general public seeking assistance? Or is the answer polite niceties of “Sorry, he’s out on the field…away from his desk…out on a meeting…this is Jose, your call is important to us, leave your name and number.”

If the employee is out on the field, which field are you referring to? Is it an agency inspection, or out at a coffee shop to join the rest of do-nothing gangs perk up the rumor industry? If he is away from his desk, where did he go and must my request for a return call be ignored as a taxpayer? Why the grand sense of insensitivity? Did you forget who is paying for your salaries?

Why is there an answering machine and not real live employees manning calls from the general public? Are you scared of having to work? Is your bi-weekly loot sent via an answering machine too? Where’s your understanding of public service? Is the prevailing dismissive attitude a redefinition of public service? Nothing can be further from the truth!

And I’ll add one more notch to this piece: I will begin visiting offices and coffee shops to see just how many Lord and Queen of Weeds are out on the field. I will publish names of agencies and employees who need rude awakening that their salaries in these bad times came from the backbreaking work product of private industries and their employees. No worries! This is the meanest bastard in the valley.

DelRosario is a regular contributor to the Saipan Tribune’s Opinion Section.