Gann’s Pay Initiative
The Gann initiative is the most confused, useless, and patently damaging proposal to be put before California voters in my memory.
The ceiling it places on salaries (or is it compensation?) of state, county and city employees is well under the current salaries of State University and University of California presidents, chancellors and vice presidents, most police and fire chiefs, heads of county hospitals, professors of medicine, engineering, graduate business administration and law.
These people are not overpaid! They are simply paid what others are paid in similar positions in other states.
Maybe Gann doesn’t know that you get what you pay for. If California becomes non-competitive we will destroy the University of California, reduce county medical care to quackery, and have fire and police services in the hands of third-class incompetents.
What will the taxpayers get? Nothing. There is no provision in the Gann measure to return even one cent to taxpayers! The initiative is a personal vendetta on the part of Gann to cut the salaries of public servants whom he seems to despise for some reason.
Are we to ruin the education and health of our children and destroy the public safety because Gann is off on another tear?
ROBERT D. SINGER
Riverside
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