Auntie Charo's Soapbox

"Lamorena says GovGuam staffers too important to withhold increments
May 26, 2005

The Camacho Administration has responded to the call by the Chamber of
Commerce, urging Governor Felix Camacho to hold off on paying out increments until the government pays up and settles it's outstanding obligations. According to Governor's spokesperson Tony Lamorena, it all boils down to prioritization.
"The employees are the heart and soul [of the public sector], they're the ones who get the work done and if anything, they're a priority," said Lamorena. "You cannot accomplish the mission of an organization if you're employees are not taken care of."
The Chamber sent a letter to the Governor urging the delay of pay increments to government employees until the Government of Guam's "numerous unfulfilled financial obligations" are properly paid. Those unfulfilled obligations include vendor payments; tax refunds; school maintenance; GWA and GMH, both in need of large financial supplements; retirement obligations; and multi-million dollars worth of projects for the Federal Emergency Management
Administration that have not been completed because GovGuam can not come up with the required 10% matching contribution.
According to Lamorena, despite the large deficit that the administration inherited it has done a good job of paying a lot of its debts.
Those that are in high places just don't get it, do they? Pay raises at a time when so many other issue, read obligations, need attention it seems fattening the bank accounts of the GovGuam employers, read voters, is more important. Hogwash!!!
Obviously the pay raise will benefit Lamorena as well. Just a hazardous guess, mind you. The more I see of him and Gerry Cruz, the mouthpiece at DOE, the more angry I get.
It's pretty much you're either one of the favored 'them' (GovGuam employees) or one of 'us' who must pay the dime for what we pay for, but don't get. I swear Charo, 'they' have no shame and will do as they will and the taxpaying public be damned.
The reorganization and streamling of GovGuam was an election promise. It will NOT happen. Consolidation and/or privatization is scaring those who benefit most from the way things are done and will continue to be done. As in GWA's employees saying they can do the job better, if given another chance. Another chance? Why is a second chance necessary? I've lost faith in Craddick. Or is it Craddock? Whatever, he's drawing a fat pay check and where is the improvement? Consolidation of functions, especially in the administrative and finance departments, would be a nice start. Like meter readers, for example. Last week I watched as a GWA pickup drove up with two guys. One with a stick poked around and read the meter reading back to a guy sitting in the truck. At their rates of pay I'd say reading meters is a rather expensive proposition. One should not only do the job, but one should be reading both water and power meters. All readings should go to one central accounting
and finance department and utility bills generated from them. And one
payment to one accounting department for GovGuam. Won't happen because that would mean cutting back on employees. What a thought, eh?
We could go on and on about how to do things better by being smarter. But I guess considering most GovGuam employees don't have college degrees, and maybe some don't even have high school diplomas, what can we expect? Even a former governor didn't place much emphasis on the importance of an education Don't you know it, but he was using himself as an example. Role model? The steady stream of depressing news is endless. So are the excuses about
not enough money and not even people. But there is money for pay raises? While the tax refunds, of which I am NOT due one since I pay, go upaid. What will it take to rile the population of Guam up to put an end to the way politicians do things. Oops, excuse me, the population is either employed by GovGuam or they have relatives who work in GovGuam or maybe even are in a high position. So who do we blame? We blame ourselves for the situation we find ourselves in.
I'm so delighted with the way things are that I might just get 'juiced' and dance in the streets and hope I don't get run over. Like happened a few nights ago. And will happen again before long because nobody seems to care to take charge.
New topic: Love the folks at GAIN. Today I passed a dog in distress on the side of the road near Wusstig Road. 10AM and hotter than blue blazes and the dog, I could tell, was hurt and not able to stand. She was breathing heavily in the hot sun. I drove back to GAIN and there the angel named Bambi, and a friend, right away jumped in their private car and followed me back to the scene. The dog was still there. Would have died in short order in the hot sun, except for the fact that Bambi picked her up and took her back to the shelter. Angels, I say, angels. The positive turned negative as I passed by the Seaman's Club a short time later and saw a big dog dead in the median. Probably hit and died a slow death in the hot sun as it didn't show signs of being ravaged. Sad..."

Unfortunately, we've been conditioned to expect the worst. We are used to being treated like second-class citizens, perhaps like trash-citizens, we're used to having our children treated like trash-kids. We'll all give lip-service to the increment that the governor is hell-bent on giving(remember, Carlos Bordallo said that the law dictates that is there's unspent monies from the past year that it should be spent on increments for the employees-yet no one has questioned how it is that we have left over funds when there's a deficit therefore the question of how it is that there's any leftover funds)deserving govGuam employees. Let it be known. I do not begrudge govGuam employees their increments. They are hardworking and merit the increments. Unfortunately, unpaid vendors whose profits go to pay taxes that go to pay government employee salaries need to be paid so that they can pay their salaries first. We need to cut down the size of government and can do so if let some people retire which means whatever funds we have left should go to depositing funds into the retirement fund so that these people can get off the government payroll and so on....I'm not saying don't give the increments, I'm saying as others are asking/saying.....'delay' the increments until such time as the government coffers can afford such an expenditure.
It's a brave thing to be able to stand up and say that I'd rather not be re-elected because I want to keep the government operating than to say that I want to be re-elected, therefore I'm going to spend every rec-cent in the coffers, bills, be-damned! Regarding the increments, there's an old Samoan saying:'You shake in vain the branch that bears no fruit."