Sympathy Pay Cut

According to the Osceola News Gazette from Saturday, Kissimmee Utility Authority President Jim Welsh proposed a "sympathy pay cut" for KUA's employees to help the City of Kissimmee meet its financial obligations. The one time offer of $661,068.00 would have been used to prevent job losses from the city and would be accomplished by a salary freeze to all KUA employees. Supposedly Jim Welsh made this offer at last week's monthly KUA board meeting because the city had just enacted a 90 day severance policy. The WayneWho staff is still trying to connect the dots on how a severance policy created a need for KUA's president to make such a bad business decision, but we assume it has less to do with saving jobs than it does with helping an old buddy run for re-election.

To bolster our assumption we would point to the financials of KUA itself. Strong profits, solid growth, and no forecast budget shortfall predicted in the years to comes are not indicators that cutback are necessary. As a matter of fact the company is working to expand its power generation capabilities, meaning more employees will be needed to handle all of the new homes being added to our inventory. KUA also has other areas where this amount could be drawn from including its reserves, but that suggestion was not taken seriously when it was made at the board meeting. Mr. Welsh indicated that KUA employees should suffer along with the city employees, which sounded to us like they want to spread the punishment for the passage of Amendment 1 as far as they possibly can. We also would point to the fact that Mayor Swan and Jim Welsh were the only two who seemed briefed on this discussion item. From audience accounts of the discussion, the other board members were surprised and stunned that the issues was in front of them. In the end, there is no sound basis in the business world for this decision to be made.

From the e-mails of those in the room that night we can tell you that the meeting was more heated and emotional than was described in the Gazette's article. Something more seemed to be at stake than just letting the city continue to operate a bloated government and Jim Swan was very upset when it was not approved. With tough re-election bids for a few sitting commissioners who have talked tough about cutting government without actually doing so, finding a way to save the day and allow big government to continue as-is would make for a great press release. While commissioners have made a few motions to support cutbacks, very few cutbacks have actually been made. Last week the commission even supported funding a non-profit downtown event organization while still being faced with possibility of laying off employees. Mismanagement maybe? Out-of-touch? Is this what you are asking KUA employees to sacrifice for?

We have to ask if the KUA board members and the city commission are going to look into the possible ethics violation that may have just happened. Did the Mayor of Kissimmee try to force our local utility into giving money to the city to help in a re-election bid? If this was to 'save' jobs at the city, then was this move made to ignore the will of the people who have told government to cut back and trim down its size? We also have to question Jim Welsh's ability to make solid business decisions. Was this decision based on any factual data that indicated that this wage freeze would help KUA or its ratepayers? Would handing over this money to keep people on the payroll at the city possibly compromise our safety during this year’s hurricane season?

Of course we will never know the answers to any of these questions because the questions will never be asked and government will continue to operate in an ethical gray area that most people don't understand or want to know about. This is why we must look at reforms that spell out the ethical boundaries elected officials should operate within. If we had ethics reforms then a decision such as this could be discussed from a practical sense and the community would know that their best interests were being looked after instead of those of a re-election campaign.