The Texas Department of Public Safety admitted that just having one guard on duty when the governor's mansion was torched by an arsonist is indicitive of a larger problem with the agency. There are not enough officers to do the job statewide. The agency is currently 200 officers short of the number they are budgeted for, and that number could easily rise to 600 as "baby boomers" start to retire in the next three years.
According to Don Dickson, who represents the Texas State Troopers Association, "They're just stretched too darn thin. It's as simple as that. We don't have enough people to do the job." Part of this can be handled in the short term by reorganizing, and letting civilians handle desk jobs and tasks such as giving driver's tests.
But the truth of the matter is that both the federal government and many city governments just pay more. As long as that is true, there will be a shortage. Especially since an officer can advance in a local department without uprooting their family and moving them all over our huge state.
But this is not a problem that stops with the Department of Public Safety. It extends to the Department of Criminal Justice, the Texas Youth Commission, Child (and Adult) Protective Services and many other state agencies.
The four or five top people in each agency are usually cronies of the governor or other top state politicians, and they get paid very nicely. But when you further down to the people who are actually doing the job on the frontlines, the pay drops radically. Texas has traditionally been one of the lowest paying states.
Now if these were easy paper-pushing jobs, it might be different. But most are not. Many of these state employees do dangerous and/or very difficult tasks. They deal with criminals, the mentally ill and angry members of the public, and most of the time they do a very good job. Their reward for that is to be underpaid and constantly criticized.
As long as the state continues to underpay and criticize those they employ, the problems of understaffing will just get worse. Texas can no longer get away with paying small-state salaries for it's big-state problems. It's time for our state politicians to "bite the bullet" and pay state employees fairly.
We always can seem to find the money to funnel millions of dollars into corporate pockets. Why can't we adequately pay our state employees?
Blame the libs that funnel all our taxes to welfare of one type or another.
ReplyDeleteOnly if you're talking about welfare for the rich. Texas gives much more to corporations than to the poor. Welfare payments for the poor are among the lowest in the nation.
ReplyDelete"Libs that funnel all our taxes to welfare" is not the problem in Texas. The problem is that we have a bunch of politicians in Austin who think that they're there to represent the interests of big business, not those of the people.
ReplyDeleteBig business means lots of good jobs. There is no corporate welfare so to speak unless you count the refusal to enforce immigration laws from both democrps and repulicons.
ReplyDeleteWelfare in Texas might be lower than many states but still it is a huge drain on the taxpayer. Infrastructure suffers because of it.