Your article on a bloated State bureaucracy is something I’ve been bothered about — it’s good that there has been a recent study backing up such charges. Could it be made an election topic? Not by any incumbant lawmaker, for sure, but maybe by the public or new candidates?
Maybe NewsLanc should do a chart comparing state gov. headcount per capita and salaries/benefits for PA and the other states mentioned (NY, CA, Texas).
They justify nearly free medical/dental/eye care by saying that salaries are low and they want to attract good people — well, how about normalizing salaries, health benefits, pensions, vesting, etc. instead of skewing the mix so that the public has to pay for the portion whose cost has been increasing at many times the rate of inflation?
This would also give legislators more stake in health care reform.
Normalizing the salary and benefits of all state workers to the median of PA private sector employees would be a very fair method of compensation. When the private sector succeeds, the state workers would benefit.