“You’re
the first person I’ve called,” said a barely familiar voice on the phone
Thursday. “The city employees are being
cut 10% across the board, starting Monday.”
My heart sank. Take 10 % off the salaries of those at the
top of the employee pile and you might be cutting into their entertainment
budget, unless they’re some of those who over-imagined their importance and
mortgaged big-time before 2008. But take
10% off the wages of those at the bottom, where every penny is already
stretched thin, and here comes a household crisis.
The employee who called had been
informed by his department head that the cut was needed thanks to the City
Council’s dilly-dallying over the budget deficits. Not true.
When I spoke with Tamara Lakin, head of Finance who claimed authorship
of the 10% cut, she was clear that the budget is fine. “It’s our cash flow that’s in trouble,” she
said, caused solely by “two
unanticipated expenses starting in June.”
To avoid a crisis, Lakin moved in the only way she saw possible to
release the needed cash into the stream she has to provide.
The first of those two unanticipated
expenses was Rich Wilkinson’s severance package. The second is the settlement likely pending
from Brian Clower’s lawsuit to claim the severance he was denied by Wilkinson,
and the pain and suffering resulting from Wilkinson’s management of the Public
Safety Department, which created an inhospitable working environment. If the Council votes to settle rather than
let the lawsuit go forward, those facts will die with the rest of the weekly
news - which, with Wilkinson gone, may be the best place for them (until the
next despot arrives.) But the price of
that silence comes due immediately.
If the Council bears any
responsibility in this cash flow crisis, it is in approving Wilkinson’s goodbye
party. You may (or may not) remember,
however, that the three council members who were most likely NOT to approve it
were sidelined by Wilkinson’s charge of conspiracy (which was dismissed last
month by the DA.)
Aided and abetted by Mario Zamora,
the city attorney, it was a stunt that worked.
Two of the three were excluded from this vote (Padilla and Mecum) while
Sanchez was elected to join Salinas and Kimball to maintain a quorum, where his
severance package was approved. From
their long terms on the council, Salinas and Kimball also bear responsibility
for supporting Wilkinson’s appointment in the first place and negotiating his
overly-powerful contract. If you want to
blame the Council for the 10% pay cut, put it squarely on them.
Where I want to put the blame is on
false witness. You remember: it’s that
thing we’re not supposed to bear against each other in the community of faith,
the ninth of the Ten Commandments, the anchor of the Judeo-Christian
world. Old Testament theologian Walter
Brueggemann says the Ten are the framework for another kind of world - Yahweh’s
- one where “the big ones do not eat the little ones,” where instead people
strive to reduce the size difference, working with kindness for the equality of
all. Not bearing false witness, he says,
is particularly important in government where, if there is no truth, there can
be no justice. The big ones will have
the little ones for dinner, literally, on a daily basis. That’s what’s happening here.
Neighbors, your words still ring in
my head: “It’s always been this way -
you’re not going to change it.” I don’t
think that’s true. What’s true is that
we have a vipers’ nest of false witness in this town, and it will continue to
claim our vitality as long as we turn our backs on it, feeling helpless. But when we’re ready to call false witness on
the carpet and declare zero tolerance, we’re on our way to a brave new
world: something leaning toward the
Kingdom, or at least the democracy Jefferson tried to provide.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Trudy Wischemann is a neophyte Quaker/Methodist/Franciscan/Populist who writes. You can send her your false witness sightings c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
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