Don Pogreba of Intelligent Discontent beat me to the punch on this one (not that such a thing is particularly hard to do), and he’s exactly right. Montana House Speaker Bob Bergren (a Democrat) wants to eliminate bonuses paid to political appointees when the elected official who appointed them has reached the end of his or her term. That’s all well and good, I suppose, but as Don says:
Speaker Bergren and the Legislature should do more than block end of term bonuses, and eliminate them altogether.
The thing that interests me here, though, is the why. In my opinion, the proposal just stinks of partisan hackery. Mr. Bergren seems to think it’s all kinds of awful for Republican Brad Johnson to hand out bonuses as he’s exiting stage left (and it is), but Democrat John Morrison, and presumably Democrat Mike McGrath, as well as Democrat Linda McCulloch are “do[ing] [it] for the right reasons.” I suppose the arguement is that their largess didn’t occur at the end of their terms of office, but it sure looks like splitting hairs to me. Isn’t it nice to see that we’re moving beyond all that syconphantic behavior of the past?
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To me the issue boils down to “were these political appointees promised a bonus if they increased the efficiency of their respective departments?” If so, that’s part of the hiring process and trying to go back and renegotiate their employment terms doesn’t seem the correct thing to do.
Posted 14 Jan 2009 at 10:36 pm ¶I will say the Secretary of State’s office improved election reporting during Brad Johnson’s tenure. And I’m sure they streamlined other election procedures as well. So I don’t have a problem with “walk off” bonuses in this case.
I agree Mike, that if they are a part of any contract all is well and good. That is not how I understand they were given, however. Gregg at Electric City Weblog says it better than I.
Posted 16 Jan 2009 at 5:53 pm ¶Post a Comment