BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY DEC. 5, 2016) — Here’s some Christmas cheer from Forbes magazine, one you can be sure Pittsfield treasurer Matt “Kufflinks” Kerwood will conveniently miss. He’s another of the thousands who don’t read PLANET VALENTI!

From Forbes: “Massachusetts now has a $67 billion budget shortfall, making it the fourth-worst state in the union when it comes to “taxpayers’ burden,” according to an analysis by Truth in Accounting.

That’s an absolute ranking against America’s other 49 states. When you factor in the moribund and dead economies in Berkshire County and the city of Pittsfield respectively, it gets worse. Thanks to a generation of incessant public spending, tax hikes, declining population, and an influx of moochers (those on the dole who suck up services without contributing anything in return), Pittsfield ranks last among Commonwealth municipalities.

Papering Over the Hole in the Wall

Of course, with profligate public spenders of Kufflink’s ilk at the helm, the situation will worsen. To the city treasurer, this ponderous state of the economy represents a hole in the wall to wallpaper with triple talk that makes hazy former treasurer Dick Bordeau’s as clear as the Dick and Jane Reader.

One step Pittsfield must take if it wishes to avoid economic meltdown is pension reform. Current pension deals leave Pittsfield owing nearly half a billion dollars (yes, with a “b”) in post-employment liabilities. Those deals were negotiated “in good faith,” the apologists point out. True — if you leave out the prepositional phrase. There has been little “good faith” in city pacts, especially contracts signed by the Pittsfield School Department (PSD) on behalf of its 1,200 employees. “Good faith” would have given Mary Jane and Joe Kapanski a place at the negotiating table. With Kathy Yon, Kathy Amuso, John Krol, Peter Marchetti, and the rest of them clogging up the school committee and city council, the PSD negotiated with itself.

Pension reform can be accomplishged. Just as the current benefits were negotiated, so can they be renegotiated. It’s not a step THE PLANET would ever recommend lightly, but there is little light here. There is, however, a dark tunnel at the end of the little light there is. The solution:

1. Elect politicians with the guts to petition Boston for home rule to renegotiating pensions.
2. Sit down with the unions (especially teachers) and fashion realistic post-employment obligations.
3. This will preserve retirement packages for public employees while giving taxpayers a much-needed break.
4. Propse and pass municpial budgets that lower taxes for homeowners and businesses.

Pensions ‘Not Adequately Funded’

Further in the Forbes article, we find this:

State employees (including teachers) “have been promised $27.8 billion of pension benefits and $17 billion of retirees’ health care benefits, but the state has not adequately funded them. Unless these pension and retirees’ health care benefits are renegotiated, future taxpayers will be burdened with paying for these benefits without receiving any corresponding government services or benefits.”

The state may do as it wishes, but Pittsfield must act now. “Now” translates into “the municipal elections of 2017. Out with politics as usual.

Also from Forbes, we share this so people may be armed when we hear labor demanding $15 and hour for minimum wage:

Ed Rensi, the former president and CEO of McDonald’s USA, writes: “As the labor union-backed Fight for $15 begins yet another nationwide strike on November 29, I have a simple message for the protest organizers and the reporters covering them: I told you so. It brings me no joy to write these words. The push for a $15 starter wage has negatively impacted the career prospects of employees who were just getting started in the workforce while extinguishing the businesses that employed them. I wish it were not so. But it’s important to document these consequences, lest policymakers elsewhere decide that the $15 movement is worth embracing.”

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We better wake up economically before we blow the whole shooting match. That’s true for the country, state, and city. We can’t control national events. Statewide, we know Boston only cares about getting another set of Berkshire Representoids with no will except to do the will of their Masters. But locally, the people of Pittsfield could, if they could somehow unite determine their own destiny.

It begins in 2017.

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“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” — Milton Friedman

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE FOR ALL.

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