Creating Second Class State Employees

WHY ARE SC TAXPAYERS SUBSIDIZING MORTGAGES FOR SOME EMPLOYEES AND NOT OTHERS?

FITSNews – June 27, 2008 – There’s a little brief from the Associated Press this morning which highlights a big problem in the way South Carolina treats its state employees. It’s not as bad as the Indian caste system, of course, but that’s clearly the road we’re headed down if blatant government discrimination against certain state employees like this continues.

Let’s start with the report:

A new state program has helped 170 teachers across South Carolina own their first home.

The Palmetto Hero Program was part of the Education Department’s efforts to attract and keep high-quality teachers. Schools Superintendent Jim Rex says buying a first home is particularly hard for teachers with low salaries.

Teachers who were first-time home buyers qualified for an interest rate of 5.875 percent and down payment assistance up to $7,000. The average loan was around $117,000.

The program was a collaboration of the state Education and Housing Authority departments. The agencies obligated $20 million in loans in what they hope is the first of many phases.

Alright, it all sounds hunky-dory on the surface until you consider a couple of things. First of all, South Carolina has already raised teacher salaries above the Southeastern average, keeping pace with inflation and ranking 29th in the nation in 2005, according to published reports.

Of course in spite of all that investment, we still rank dead last in graduation rates and next-to-last in SAT scores nationally … probably because all of our teacher bonuses have nothing to do with actually enhancing individual academic achievement … and also because we spend so much money on sheer ridiculousness.

Having said that, we don’t really blame our teachers (particularly not the hot ones) for our lack of performance.

After all, we consistently fake accountability reform in this state and do a ridiculously shitty job of getting money to the classroom where it’s needed most.

And most importantly, we do absolutely nothing to compel our shitty school system to improve because we deny parents the right to spend even a fraction of the $11,000 we shell out per pupil on public education on an alternative solution that actually meets their children’s needs.

So what do we spend all that money on? Well, in addition to a lot of swanky hotel rooms for educrats, we do a pretty good job of subsidizing union development and paying for taxpayer-funded political activity.

But the fact that school teachers are getting favorable mortgage rates and up to $7,000 in cold hard cash to plop down on a mortgage raises a much bigger issue.

Sure, South Carolina needs quality teachers – which is ironically what legitimate competition, merit-based pay increases and better allocating the billions upon billions we spend on dysfunctional bureaucracy would actually create if we ever tried any of those things.

But don’t we also need more prison guards? More law enforcement personnel? More social service case workers? More nurses?

We seem to recall hearing of shortages in all of these areas, but you don’t see government offering favorable mortgage rates and down payments on their homes to any of these workers (most of whom make much less on average than teachers).

And what about the rest of state government employees? For example, Sic Willie sure as hell didn’t get a 5% mortgage rate and $7,000 to plop down on a new home when he worked in the governor’s office.

You better believe if we were prison guards pulling down $23,000, struggling to hold down two jobs just to make rent, we’d be talking to one of Sic’s lawyers right about now.

Because that’s a helluva case, people.

That’s the problem with this boondoggle (which obviously seems to be in its infancy, so God only knows how much it’s going to cost next year) – it creates two classes of state employees, a select group of “haves” and a broad swath of “have-nots.”

Frankly, government shouldn’t be subsidizing mortgages or providing down payments to any of its employees. They’re already well-paid and they receive guaranteed benefit increases even if the money isn’t in the budget to pay them.

But showing such blatant favoritism to one set of employees over another is just wrong – and we wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a court case soon from one or more state workers who didn’t get a similar head start on home ownership.

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