Fans of Emo Senator will remember that when we last left Mike Parry, star and hero of Southern Minnesota's most beloved telenovela, the emotive state senator was threatening to get litigious over Governor Dayton's decision to allow home childcare providers vote on unionizing via a secret ballot.
In today's episode, he's back to crying over public employees' lost wages during the government shutdown, while planning a show hearing to stoke public anger over their severance packages (though remaining oddly affectless about the fact that the most outrageous bonuses get funneled to those working at top administrative posts at MNSCU).
The Emo Senator tells The Owatonna People's Press reports in Report: Shutdown cost state $60M:
“As I take a look at these numbers, I still believe that our governor put us into the shutdown for political gain in the upcoming election. It shows here that that was the only thing that came out of the shutdown,” he said. “The way our governor picked certain high profile and politically driven facets to shut down, like the state parks and rest stops, he knew what he was doing. In all reality, his political move to inflict this pain really inflicted the pain on him and his party in the long run by doing this.”
Since Parry wasn't in the legislator during the shutdowns that occurred during the Pawlenty adminstration, fans are left to guess whether he believes the routine closure of parks and restrooms during the TPaw shutdowns were personally plotted by a Republican governor to cause pain.
But it's not enough for the Belle of Waseca County to cry over lost wages by government employees. In a cameo in the pages of the Star Tribune's Republicans, DFLers argue over state employee payouts, Emo Senator gushes:
Sen. Mike Parry, R-Waseca, who chairs a House-Senate subcommittee on employee relations, said he would hold hearings on a decades-old system that allowed state employees to receive payouts at retirement for unused sick and vacation time.
While Republicans and DFLers acknowledged the provisions had long been a feature of public employee union contracts, both said the payments need to be re-examined given the state's sour economy and the fact that such perks are not available in the private sector.
"I was somewhat surprised, as were many people, that these kinds of payouts were happening," said Parry, who has drawn the ire of DFLers and public employee unions for his aggressive stance on public employee contracts. . . .
. . .Parry said, however, that the public employee union provisions were put in place while DFLers had a decades-long majority in the Minnesota Senate, and while the Legislature and others had simply taken a "rubber stamp" approach to worker contracts.
"In business, you don't do that," said Parry, who wants state government to adopt more private business practices.
A suburban Democrat points out that most public employees aren't receiving "these kinds of payouts":
But Rep. Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley, who also serves on the House-Senate employee relations subcommittee, disagreed. The state university contracts came about or were renewed while Minnesota Chamber of Commerce president David Olson -- often an ally of Republicans -- chaired MnSCU's board, said Winkler.
"If it wasn't for the MnSCU, you know, payouts, it wouldn't even be news, right?" said Winkler. "Nobody's going to write about a $7,000 [payout] for somebody who worked for the state for 40 years."
We believe that Parry should be taken at his word when he talks about making state government salaries work more like the private sector.
Indeed, given his apparent silence about huge bonuses for top MNSCU administrators, while bashing the benefits received by state employees at the bottom of the payscale, fans can recognize his authentic desires to help recreate the corporate world in public government.
Will the Emo Senator rest--and the tears stop flowing--until he makes the ratio between the highest paid MNSCU administrator and the average state worker conform to the ratio found in the private sector: 325 to 1.
Did Flouncett O'Parra come up with this on his own, or did Rhett Brodkorb, the former "independent blogger", do it for him?
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | Nov 24, 2011 at 11:49 PM