The Auditor, former Mayor Cicchinelli's Loyal Defender, Jayne Ferrero, is intentionally shorting the new mayor about three million dollars so Ferrero may pay off the old mayor's bills.
Right now.
Ferrero certainly never shorted the Extraordinary One's revenue when he was mayor.
But that was different.
Ferrero is, was, and will always be a Cicchinelli loyalist.
Ferrero happily hid Cicchinelli's past due bills in the city's sock drawer, letting him run the city on the proverbial city credit card, and waited until he was safely out of office before smacking the new mayor with this financial shortage of Ferrero's own making.
Jayne Ferrero is doing this purely out of political motivation.
She is creating a $3 million dollar hole in the city's budget in the hope that Catazaro-Perry will fail.
So that Catazaro-Perry has to make cuts so drastic that they literally decimate city government.
"She (Catazaro-Perry) is going to have to make cuts, make consolidations. She’s going to have to do some tough love.” (Jayne Ferrero, The Independent, January 20, 2012).
"Tough Love"
You can almost hear the glee in Ferrero's voice as she smugly throws the city into the financial abyss to satisfy the political agenda of her master.
There will be cuts.
There will be sacrifices.
And of course, if your are an elected official, there will be the annual, unvoted pay raise.
Yes, our Mayor, Auditor, Treasurer, Law Director, Council President, and council members will all be receiving a 3.5% pay raise this year.
Our elected officials will once more be asking the worker bees to sacrifice, while they get yet another pay raise. An annual, unvoted, automatic pay raise.
Now, to be fair, Mayor Kathy Catazaro-Perry opposed these automatic, unvoted, annual pay raises for elected officials when she was a member of council.
Mayor Cicchinelli's Loyal Enforcer, Council President Glenn Gamber, worked tirelessly to ensure that a repeal of the automatic pay raises never came up for a vote.
He asked for an informal 'show of hands' so that those favoring annual, unvoted, automatic pay raises did not have to go on record favoring annual, unvoted, automatic pay raises.
We certainly hope at least one of our new council members has the common sense and, quite honestly, the courage to bring up the issue of repealing the annual, unvoted, automatic pay raises.
We say courage, because we are confident Glenn Gamber will be once more leading the fight to keep his annual, unvoted, automatic pay raise.
Some of our elected officials have stated they will be returning the pay raise.
According to the Independent newspaper, this includes;
Mayor Kathy Catazaro-Perry
Councilman Donnie Peters
Councilwoman Nancy Halter
Councilman Ed Lewis
Paul Manson is on the fence.
We haven't read where Auditor Ferrero is returning her raise.
While she wants others to have their jobs cut, and expects the new mayor to show "tough love," it appears Ferrero is taking her own raise, as she has yet to publicly state other wise.
And she deserves it, too.
Shocking city finances into chaos so that her political master will be well satisfied is indeed hard work, and deserves a certain level of compensation.
So, as Ferrero smugly quips about others bearing the brunt of her reckless financial oversight, she is afforded a pay raise.
We know, we know, the "dollars will be there."
At least for Jayne Ferrero.
And as for the peasants?
Let them eat cake.
