Editorial: Don’t tell me it’s raining, when you’re pissing on my boots

(WATCH: Sen. Chris Barnett scolded Guam Department of Education officials on their insistence on taking funding for pay raises ahead of funding to improve public schools.)

An appropriation of $50 million every year could subsidize the college tuition of every public school graduate AND provide the annual debt service to build several new schools.

Instead, the democrats in the Guam Legislature and the governor have elected to spend your additional $50 million every year in perpetuity to an across-the-board 22 percent pay raise for employees of the General Pay Plan.

Do public employees deserve pay raises? Some of them do, I’m sure. But not all of them; and especially not those making already-high salaries.

And in the context of priorities, no reasonable citizen would put pay raises ahead of clearly-lacking fundamental services this $1 billion-government of Guam has neglected for decades.

If we can do it all with the so-called amazing financial situation of GovGuam, according to the governor, then where is the plan to build those new schools? Hell, we can’t even fix the ones we have. GovGuam is on the brink of losing free money from the Feds that is supposed to fix schools.

GovGuam can’t even build Simon Sanchez High School after a decade since it was authorized. Last election, Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero specifically promised groundbreaking in December last year. What a joke.

What about universal pre-school for three year olds, and four year olds? What about supplies for teachers and students? What about funding for training and professional development of teachers and staff?

There remain only 260+ Guam Police Department officers on the payroll, when we’re supposed to have 500 at any given time. This is nearly five years after the governor first promised to add 100 officers to the force. And that was when former Gov. Eddie Calvo handed over a police force that exceeded 300 uniformed officers.

We’re told the financial situation is the best it’s ever been, and in the same breath, the governor has implored senators to keep the increased business privilege tax rate at five percent of gross receipts. She “never” wants to see the rate go back to the levels she promised in the election of 2018. Why? If the finances are so great, why can’t the ordinary consumers of the island realize a tax break?

Is it because we need new roads? Oh, that’s right, federal highway funds pay for those on the routed roadways. And our tax dollars evidently aren’t going to repair the village streets, otherwise they wouldn’t look like scenes from a war zone.

Is our money going to the repairs needed at decrepit Guam Memorial Hospital? They can’t even secure online infrastructure, what more their leaking roof, dying electrical panel, and 20th Century maternity ward?

At a government workforce of 13,000, there now is more than one GovGuam employee for every 10 adults on this island. Yet, the line for services at the Guam Department of Revenue and Taxation tells a very different story.

Did you lose your job and need food benefits and Medicaid? Sorry, your hunger and prescription medicine is going to have to wait for the bureaucracy to get it together. And if you’re kid in foster care who’s being abused by your foster parent, you’re just going to have to wait like everyone else for the Department of Public Health and Social Services to get to your complaint. The government of Guam has other priorities. Pay raises.

The argument has been made by proponents of the raises that GovGuam may lose employees to the private sector if wages don’t go up beyond the merit-based increases allowable under increment entitlements. Good. The government of Guam already is too big.

Here’s a solution to the pay issue: Governor, pay the merit bonuses. Actually update the Hay Study to scientifically calculate the increase each position under the General Pay Plan should be paid. Don’t base it on national comparatives, because that’s just silly.

And when senators propose to fund the solutions needed to the problems the public has prioritized, don’t tell us there isn’t enough money after handing out pay raises. As former Gov. Calvo liked to say: Don’t tell me it’s raining, when you’re pissing on my boots.