Give the man a break; he did the right thing and that’s what the governor is supposed to do.
Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed a 2 percent pay cut for state employees making more than $45,000 per year. Almost immediately, our message boards and others in the digital space started accusing him of “only” doing it for political reasons.
No. 1: Who cares?
No. 2: Why are we constantly surprised when our politicians do things for political reasons?
No. 3: Who cares?
Let me tell you something about Charlie Crist and almost every other person I know who holds public office. Most really want to do the right thing. They view it as public service and many, if not most, could be making a lot more money doing other things.
And many, if not most, do want to win their next election.
For some it seems almost addictive, needing to grab the next shiny penny rolling across their path.
Politicians do things for political reasons.
Doctors do things for medical reason.
Teachers do things for educational reasons.
These things should not surprise us, should not be viewed as a negative or a positive characteristic. They just are.
My own reaction to the news that the governor acted to keep at least $900 in state workers’ families budget was the same as one of my Facebook friends, who wrote:
“On behalf of locally owned businesses and families of state workers everywhere: Yippeeeeeeeee! Let's find smart ways to heal this economy.”
The other argument was expressed by this poster on Tallahassee.com:
“So what I get from the gist of this story is that Crist was all about cutting spending and keeping taxes low ... before he decided to run for Senate. Now he sees the benefit (to him) of buying votes with spending.”
I talked to the governor not too long ago at an editorial-board meeting at the Tallahassee Democrat, well before he announced his decision to run for the U.S. Senate seat that becomes vacant in 2010. My gut feeling at the time was that he had already decided to run for the Senate but had not yet decided what to do with the Legislature’s cut of state workers’ pay.
I asked him the same question many others had been asking: Why would it be fair to take money from state workers by cutting their pay instead of taking money from others in the form of taxes or fees?
He said then that didn’t necessarily seem fair. But he was going to have to look at the whole picture.
The argument that he vetoed the state workers’ pay cut for political reasons is phony on its face anyway.
You really think the Senate election is going to come down to this? That state workers will vote in unison – as a single block – and that there are enough state workers to turn the tide? This is an election for the U.S. Senate, not Tallahassee city commission, where state workers are concentrated in large enough numbers to make a difference.
My view of this is that the governor didn’t need the money to make the budget work and did the right thing. Leave it at that and be happy the money is available to the Tallahassee area’s economy.
But even if I’m wrong about motivation, as I said: who cares?
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