Only some salaries inflated

Amid assumptions that the state’s continuing revenue crisis demands new concessions from the unions, here’s another idea. The big money is not going to union-represented line staff, but to an elite class of employees called the Washington Management Service (WMS).

These employees provide no front-line service to clientele and often supervise fewer workers than do the real line supervisors beneath them. They provide an additional and unnecessary layer of “quality assurance” (whip cracking) to one or another inflated model of bureaucratic practice. Each WMS position draws between $80,000 and $100,000, annually. Since 1994, the ranks of these overseers have grown from 400 to 5,000.

In contrast, in 2010, union-represented workers gave up a negotiated 4 percent wage increase, are experiencing a 5 percent wage cut due to the furloughs now in effect, and face a proposed doubling of our premium share for medical benefits. Thousands of represented workers have lost their jobs, while WMS employees protect themselves in the budgets they present. Administration is circling the wagons.

I wish the governor, legislators, media and even our unions would pay more attention to this scandalous drain on the state’s diminishing resources.

Is everything on the table?

Morton Alexander

Spokane