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Bean Counters At Work

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By STEVE OTTO

sotto@tampatrib.com

Published: April 1, 2009

"April," T.S. Eliot warned us at the beginning of his epic 1922 poem, "is the cruelest month."

I think our class spent an entire semester on that thing, and I never quite understood it, although it was hard to forget lines about rats dragging slimy bellies and dead lilacs. It wasn't my kind of poetry. Maybe I didn't really begin to appreciate "The Waste Land" until I got interested in local government.

Now it makes sense, although after some miserable months to kick off the still young year, the idea that April is going to be even meaner is not encouraging. Shoot, I'm barely hanging on in my basketball bracket.

Anyhow, speaking of rats and slimy bellies, it's appropriate on this first day in April to see what's going on at your Hillsborough County Commission.

Yes, heaven help us, the commission is in session this morning, and it might be best to stay off the streets until sundown for our own protection.

A Thousand Jobs

The big news, which rolled in just in time for you to worry about it last weekend, came from County Administrator Pat Bean. She warned that over the next year or so, the county government might have to eliminate 1,000 jobs.

One commissioner, Al Higginbotham, took issue with Bean's warning, calling it politics. He even suggested it was aimed at Sheriff David Gee's empire, whose military force is larger than those of several smaller countries.

Politics or not, 1,000 jobs in Hillsborough County is something to pause for a minute and think about, especially if one of them is yours.

If you work for the county, you do pretty well. If you're a computer person, go to our Web site, Tampa Bay Online (TBO.com), and take a gander at the database that lists salaries of thousands of county employees.

The county is a huge employer, but it is still a little eye-opening when you start perusing the salary list and discover you have to go through more than 300 names before you get to someone not making more than $100,000 a year. I think No. 301, the last six-figure name on the list, works as a home appraiser. You would think that as property values plunge, his or her salary might go down with them. I guess it doesn't work that way.

Maybe there are 1,000 jobs we can do without. Governments are seldom lean and mean. Technology has eliminated so many jobs over the years. I remember as a kid when the garbage truck came through and there would be a driver and two guys in the back picking up the cans and heaving them into the bin. Now, some poor guy driving a behemoth of a truck comes by himself and robotic arms reach out and pick up huge cans that half the older people on our block cannot get to the street without help. I suppose that's progress.

A Thousand Lives

But still, 1,000 jobs are 1,000 lives. They also are the lives of spouses and children. They are people who buy homes and make mortgage payments. They are people going to grocery stores and shopping malls. They are people in churches and synagogues, filling up offering plates and helping the needy.

They are so many things connecting one business to another 1,000 times over. I don't have any answers here. I see some companies, including our own, are trying to salvage jobs with furloughs, which at least holds all of those things together.

No, 1,000 jobs are not politics. They are a community.

Keyword: Otto Graphs, for more of Steve Otto's musings.

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