David Engle laid out the case against a tax-payer funded jail for North County in his Letter to the Editor published by the Montecito Journal…
“There is no need for an increase in sales taxes to fund a new jail in the North County, because the County already has more than enough money to pay for it out of current revenues,” astutely wrote Mr. Engle. “The problem is that the County has been on a spending binge wasting our tax dollars by paying its employees above-market wages, benefits unheard of in the private sector, and obscenely huge pensions that will allow the jail guards to retire at 50 with six-figure incomes. So, you see, the primary beneficiaries of the new sales tax will be already overpaid, unionized government employees.”
If those government employees were overpaid but not unionized, would that be preferred instead?
If they were not unionized, then they would not be overpaid, as the County government is firmly in the pocket of the public employee unions.