Binghamton Mayor Matt Ryan (Democrat, Citizen Action clone) is signaling he wants to raise your taxes again, after he’s already hiked them for next year. He doesn’t put it in quite those words, but that’s my interpretation of his latest comments as transmitted via today’s Press & Sun-Bulletin. In an article titled “Ryan says city’s salaries are not competitive,” the good Mayor and his mouthpiece Andrew Block attempt to lay the groundwork for raising our taxes by arguing that salaries paid by the City aren’t “competitive” and therefore important jobs are going unfilled.

According to the article, the City has been unsuccessfully advertising to the fill the following seven positions:

• Treasurer - $37,771 per year
• Deputy Comptroller - $40,942
• City Engineer - $73,000
• Housing Program Supervisor - $38,142
• Vacant Property Officer - $30,000
• Sustainable Development Planner - $34,372
• Senior Engineering Aide - $26,870

The article then selects a few nearby cities of comparable size and cherry-picks similar positions that pay more in those places. And this, of course, is evidence that we’re just too cheap in good ole Bingo to pay what people are worth.

I have a few questions for the Mayor:

• Why are so many positions suddenly now empty?
• How long have they been empty?
• Why did the people who held these positions leave?
• Why wasn’t this “important” issue mentioned long before now?

I could make a more informed decision about this issue if I had more information–if the above questions were addressed by the Mayor. I’ll grant you this: Some of those numbers do look low–at least on the surface. But consider this… add health insurance and vacation benefits (conservatively worth another $15,000 per year) to those numbers, and they don’t look so bad. And instead of raising our taxes, which you KNOW is what they’re going to try and do, how about not raising taxes but finding the money elsewhere in the budget if you want to increase salaries? How about some leadership on this issue?

Three final observations:

Observation #1: It sure didn’t take long after the conversion of the Binghamton City Council into the Citizen Action Council–i.e., the 2007 election–for the Dems to start talking about more money, did it?

Observation #2: Mayor Ryan can always blame his disaster of an administration on the “low pay” issue at the next election. (A little free campaign advice there, Matt.)

Observation #3: Both times I’ve seen press releases or articles that involve the new Communications Director, Andrew Block, I’ve seen the phrase that the City now has a “progressive agenda.” Interesting, don’t you think? Remember this…”progressive” means “hard left.” We’re now run by socialists–but then, you voted them in! Mark my words, higher taxes have just begun under the new leadership we have at the top in Binghamton.

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