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Snow Job
It was probably the correct call but every time the legislature
does something such as this, you gotta wonder, how does this play with
the citizens who sent these folks to Lansing?
Before one drop of snow hit the capitol lawn, there was the senate
GOP leader Randy Richardville declaring that session would be scrubbed
for the rest of this week.
"It was common sense," he explains.
He woke up on Tuesday morning, took one peak at the Weather
Channel and concluded it would be unsafe for the state's 38 senators to
be struggling to get to the capitol in the midst of the world's worse
ever blizzard..or so the news media would have you believe. (After all
a little hype to boost audience numbers during a sweeps month is hardly
a mortal sin...or is it when they get it way wrong?)
Soon after that the House Speaker Jase Bolger pulled the same
trigger sending his 110 members home until next Tuesday.
Fact is, these folks weren't doing much of anything anyway.
Richardville correctly points out the governor's budget won't be out
until the middle of this month and other work could be done on the
phone so why take the risk?
But take the rest of the week off?
Well turns out lawmakers don't come in on Fridays and Mondays even
when it's 90 degrees outside. And as far as taking Thursday off,
Richardville again correctly observes it did not make sense to send
Upper Peninsula senators home on Tuesday and ask them to come back on
Thursday assuming they could get back to town.
However most working slugs won't take the rest of the week off
just because of the storm on Wednesday. And those same folks were
mighty upset that they had to work on Wednesday when lawmakers did not
and they flooded one Detroit radio station with their, shall we say,
complaints.
In fact it go so bad that Rep. Vicki Barnett of Farmington Hills
called in to explain she and her colleagues were willing to stay in
town and work, but the leadership "told us to go home."
Yet the legislative leaders have a come back for all the
criticism: Even though legislators are not in the state capitol, that
does not mean they are not working back home…if you count shoveling
snow part of their state job description.
does something such as this, you gotta wonder, how does this play with
the citizens who sent these folks to Lansing?
Before one drop of snow hit the capitol lawn, there was the senate
GOP leader Randy Richardville declaring that session would be scrubbed
for the rest of this week.
"It was common sense," he explains.
He woke up on Tuesday morning, took one peak at the Weather
Channel and concluded it would be unsafe for the state's 38 senators to
be struggling to get to the capitol in the midst of the world's worse
ever blizzard..or so the news media would have you believe. (After all
a little hype to boost audience numbers during a sweeps month is hardly
a mortal sin...or is it when they get it way wrong?)
Soon after that the House Speaker Jase Bolger pulled the same
trigger sending his 110 members home until next Tuesday.
Fact is, these folks weren't doing much of anything anyway.
Richardville correctly points out the governor's budget won't be out
until the middle of this month and other work could be done on the
phone so why take the risk?
But take the rest of the week off?
Well turns out lawmakers don't come in on Fridays and Mondays even
when it's 90 degrees outside. And as far as taking Thursday off,
Richardville again correctly observes it did not make sense to send
Upper Peninsula senators home on Tuesday and ask them to come back on
Thursday assuming they could get back to town.
However most working slugs won't take the rest of the week off
just because of the storm on Wednesday. And those same folks were
mighty upset that they had to work on Wednesday when lawmakers did not
and they flooded one Detroit radio station with their, shall we say,
complaints.
In fact it go so bad that Rep. Vicki Barnett of Farmington Hills
called in to explain she and her colleagues were willing to stay in
town and work, but the leadership "told us to go home."
Yet the legislative leaders have a come back for all the
criticism: Even though legislators are not in the state capitol, that
does not mean they are not working back home…if you count shoveling
snow part of their state job description.
posted by Tim Skubick at
5:34 AM
4 Comments:
Tim,
I have a question. Is it true that other state workers were told they'd be given a "dock day" if they called in due to weather today? If this is true, it would really burn me up. I'm only slightly acquainted with one State of Michigan employee, yet the venom directed in the way of these employees seems like a horrible case of misplaced scapegoating. Can our legilators really be hypocritical enough to give themselves two snow days while the run-of-the-mill employee is threatened with a dock day for using a leave day? What about being able to use leave days that a person has earned? The traffic cam views I've seen make it look like most people stayed home today, and given the lack of winter driving skills I've seen in SE Michigan, I'd say that's a good thing.
Suzanne
Regular state employees were told they needed to come in or they needed to take vacation time.
Typical government mentality of we are the special priveledged. The sooner we change these political positions into non paying no benefit part time jobs ~ the better it will be for us tax payers who aren't as lucky to be blessed with such ridiculous tax payer funded non eseential positions.
General motors,talked that way,,So I forced myself to work. That triggered my Vietnam battle PSTD, per General Motors now collecting pension.
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