Commentary
For those with the courage to watch MSNBC rather than Fox, today’s news reminds us that Washington steadfastly lacks the courage to regulate Wall Street and the banks; in turn, of course, Wall Street and the banks continue their arrogant rip-off of America’s trusting depositors.
Thanks to the lease-holds lobbyists have obtained on the majority of U.S. House and Senate members, bank executives and Wall Street speculators are breezing along in the business-as-usual practices of creepy credit default swaps, cheesy derivatives and risky investments of free cash from the Federal Reserve.
But, not all arrogance is confined to Wall Street, as it turns out. Why, there’s even some to be found in beautiful downtown Redding. For the second day in a row today, a gathering of something like 20 of the Department of Fish and Game’s highest paid officials is taking place in the conference room of the DFG’s Locust Street offices.
DFG regional managers from as far away as San Diego are sitting with soon-to-be ex-DFG director Don Koch and his Sacramento entourage to talk about… who knows? They hadn’t returned a phone call from anewsafe.com as of 11 a.m. Thursday
(Regional Manager Gary Stacey called back Thursday afternoon. He said it was a routine regional operations meeting of the director and deputy directors about various issues facing the department, and it required overnight travel but was over by midafternoon.” About 15 people attended.)
Well, what difference does it make what the discussions were about? By rough guess, there will be upwards of $1.5 million worth of annual salaries in the room, brought to Redding through the generosity of California citizens who are providing thousands of dollars worth of travel, lodging and meal expense.
Just down the halls from the blather in the conference room, hard-working DFG employees keeping track of license sales, streambed alteration permits and trout plants are working under blood-letting 15 percent cuts in their hours and pay (but make sure you get the same amount of work done!). They include families who have closed off most rooms of their houses to curb heating and cooling bills in hopes of making it to the next reduced paycheck.
The working employees of the DFG are painfully aware that California state government — run by the worst collection of legislative droolers in the state’s history — continues to stare down the barrel of a deficit conservatively estimated at $25 billion. State government is reeling. Except, apparently, in the conference room on Locust Street.
Clearly there is plenty of money, and time, at the upper levels of the DFG to arrange for the travel of its highest salaried people from as far away as 900 miles for a “meeting” — when for considerably less taxpayer money they could have met in one of the many conference rooms in one of the many buildings the DFG rents in downtown Sacramento, and probably concluded their extremely important discussions in one day.
But led by Koch — for whom a trip to Redding is a trip home, given he maintained his Redding residence during his 18 or so months as DFG director — the top brass at the DFG have given themselves a free trip to one of the most beautiful places in California so they can sit around a large conference room table to chitchat over items they could easily have covered via teleconference. But what fun is there in that?
California citizens are in a cynical mood when it comes to state government and, naturally, the grunt-level employees of the state system are paying the price. But that’s no longer Don Koch’s problem.
He announced he is retiring come November. It’s not clear, but it is likely that his monthly retirement checks will be based entirely on his highest single year of pay, which as it turns out is the past 12 months he has been DFG director. Best guess is that he will have to try to get by on something around $8,000 to $9,000 a month in pension pay.
Maybe he can close off a couple of rooms of his house.
