Posted by
Playful Walrus on Thursday, December 03, 2009 6:19:33 PM
You don't have to read very far along in this blog to see that I consider myself a "taxpayer advocate", bash waste and excessive spending by government, and generally support limiting government.
However, I disagree with people who think it is a big deal and somehow wrong that Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, new to that position, is going to spend over $700,000 in taxpayer money to renovate his wing of the county's Hall of Administration.
The building is ancient, and it has to be expensive to renovate a fifth of a floor.
Los Angeles County has something like 100,000 employees, an annual budget of over $23 billion, and about 10.5 million residents. There are only five Supervisors comprising the County's Board of Supervisors, who hold some judicial powers and virtually all of the legislative, executive and executive appointment/firing powers. I say "virtually all" because there was a much-publicized upgrade of the Chief Administrative Officer position to a Chief Executive Officer (there is no county mayor) a couple of years back, and supposedly this CEO has some power in hiring and firing the non-elected executives (Coroner, Fire Chief, Director of Public Health, Director of Public Works, etc.). But the Board hires and fires the CEO, so really, they retain the ultimate power.
Each Supervisor, such as Ridley-Thomas, represents over TWO MILLION people. That’s over twice as many people represented by each Congressperson. It is more people than represented by 30 of our 100 Senators – and remember that those each one of those 30 Senators share representation with one of the other 30.
Not only is there a full-time staff in these offices, but the offices are visited by the public as well as international dignitaries.
So, it makes sense for them to be nice, modern offices. If - and that's a big if - the money actually goes to renovating the offices in a way that make them better for the public and the employees, and isn't part of some sort of shenanigans, I'm hard-pressed to criticize it.
By the way, notice I have not bashed Speaker of the House Pelosi for her flower bill.
I would hope that neither Ridley-Thomas nor Pelosi would criticize a conservative lawmaker who did the same things they did.
These expenditures are tiny compared to the waste that goes on all of the time.