By Chris Powell
Acknowledging reality sometimes seems like the worst offense in politics and government. Fifty years ago opposing the war in Vietnam got one called a Communist. Today opposing NATO’s proxy war with Ukraine against Russia gets one called a tool or at least an apologist for Vladimir Putin.
Something similar happened the other day in Norwalk, where the school system’s new human resources director, Denise Altro-Dixon, committed candor. She pronounced herself ready to improve local education, help school employees develop their careers, and “tackle those unions.”
Leaders of unions representing Norwalk teachers, administrators, and other school employees denounced Altro-Dixon for being “antagonistic” and taking “a union-busting approach and attitude.”
The school system’s chief financial officer, Lunda Asmani, tried to smooth things over. He said Altro-Dixon’s comment was “a poor choice of words” and he was confident she will achieve a “productive working relationship” and “genuine partnership” with the unions.
Ah, yes — a genuine partnership. So let’s pretend that the public’s interest in Norwalk’s school system is exactly the same as the interest of the school employee unions: Accountability for staff, disclosure of teacher evaluations, performance-based pay, and efficiency, as well as accountability for students and parents so that promotion from grade to grade and graduation from high school are based on learning rather than aging out.
Of course the public interest and the union interest in schools are almost exact opposites.
As a practical matter in Norwalk’s school system and most others, there is already a “genuine partnership” between the school board and the unions. The unions tell the administration what they want and rather than fight over it the administration tells municipal government how much money it must have for labor peace; municipal government raises property taxes accordingly; and school costs per pupil continue their long rise while student performance continues its long decline. Neither union members nor parents may be disturbed lest political trouble ensue.
Most municipal expense and thus most property taxes go for personnel compensation, and most municipal personnel compensation goes for school employees. If the public interest and the interest of school employee unions are the same, municipalities don’t need their current mechanisms of government. They can just let the unions run everything. Indeed, Connecticut is almost there already.
On the other hand, if municipal government ever is thought to be taking too much and delivering too little, the public will need someone to “tackle those unions” and insist that for a government official to tell the truth is not “a poor choice of words” but rather an obligation.
PANDERING ON TIPS: The major-party presidential candidates, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris, agree on something: that tips received by restaurant workers should be exempt from the federal income tax. Remarkably, Trump, supposedly the embodiment of plutocracy, got to the idea before Harris did. Despite their agreement, it’s a bad idea, just a lot of pandering.
For income is income, whether from tips or interest payments from a bond portfolio. If the objective is to shield the working class against income taxation, income taxes are already largely progressive, and because their incomes tend to be low, most wait staffers pay little federal income tax already.
An income tax exemption for tips would increase possibilities for income tax evasion, since extraneous payments could be disguised as tips.
Besides, even being subject to income taxes, tips already are rife with tax evasion, since there are often no records or no good records of them, and tip recipients can underreport their tip income with impunity. Since there are millions of restaurant wait staffers, most are part-time, and most aren’t making a lot of money, the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t have the staff to investigate so much small stuff.
If Trump and Harris really want to be working-class heroes, let them make the hard choices in the federal government that would be necessary to eliminate the inflation that is grinding the poor down.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 