Comments

1
This reeks of socialism, which as clearly outlined in Deuteronomy, is a tool of the Devil.
2
I might be wrong here, but this matched my perception that elected officials often get enormous amounts of time off.

It's a rational thing to do, suppose we elected to City Council or State Representative a person who ran a large and successful business (like Eileen Brady’s husband) who requires extensive time off in order to maintain their business.

I'm not sure the salary of a City Council member (I couldn’t find anything with a quick google search), but I know State Representatives make trivial amounts of money, and if you come from a background of making $250k/year, being elected into a civil service position making $22k/year is going to require significant lifestyle changes for their entire family.

There’s a dichotomy between regular workers and people elected to civil service, I don’t think it’s reasonable to be comparing the two. If you’re a worker and you want more time off, then you need to start your own business, or be more competitive with the companies you choose to work for. I can’t imagine how a food cart could operate when one of their employees is taking up to a month of paid time off each year, or even a couple days out of the year. I’m sorry: shitty jobs don’t get time off. If you don’t want a shitty job, then fix yourself and find other employment. That’s the reality of our world, and our government does not need to be philanthropists who altruistically mandate that the cost per employee is going up 7% next year because some people are too incompetent to better themselves voluntarily.
3
Fidelity - the average STARTING wage for a government job in Oregon - wage + benefits is around $78,000.

Our state has written into law that retiree benefits go up 7.5% a year to infinity.
4
This article from 2009 says that City Council members earned $98,000 a year and the mayor earned $118,000.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.s…

I think FA may have a point when it comes to the the State legislature, though. State senators and reps are both paid $21,612 a year.
http://www.leg.state.or.us/faq/faqinfo.htm…
5
Personally, I think the talking related to this story should be asking the City Council members who enjoy this perk to ensure that all workers in Portland are able to at least earn paid sick leave.
6
The less work the City Council does, the better off we all are. I'd be willing to pay them twice as much to do absolutely nothing.

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