Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Lawrence Council Gives Ricketts $11,000 Pay Raise

The Lawrence City Council gave Mayor Paul Ricketts an $11,000 pay raise by virtue of a 5-4 vote last night. Ricketts said nothing about the $65,000 a year pay being too low when he ran for mayor last year. Now he says the pay is too low when compared to cities of comparable size. Of course, he fails to mention the difference with those other cities. Lawrence's mayor plays a secondary role compared to other mayors because the city has been consolidated into the City of Indianapolis. The fact is that Lawrence city government and other municipal governments in Marion County should be eliminated and have their duties transferred to the consoliated city government. They perform duplicate services at best and create an unnecessary extra layer of government. Republicans should denounce Ricketts, a career government employee, for becoming such an embarrassment to the party.

7 comments:

Lawyer said...

Mayor Schneider, er, I mean Mayor Ricketts has a pair the size of basketballs to ask for a raise in these economically difficult times. In contrast, there are five Lawrence city council members who need to grow some!

AI, can you give us the identity of the Ricketts 5 and their party affiliation?

Vox Populi said...

The 5 councilors who voted for the raise are all Republicans. All 3 Democrats on the council and one Republican voted "no".

M Theory said...

I'd like to have a $1000 a month raise!

Oh wait...I'm 100% commission sales. I can give myself a raise by hard work and merit!!!!

Were there any citizen tax advocates in their community that lobbied against this?

$65k is plenty to live on for a public SERVANT!

Concerned Taxpayer said...

Lawrence has NOT been consolidated into the city of Indianapolis. It is a separate entity, an "excluded" city in Marion County, with its own government, police, fire, etc.

Whether that should change or not is another question.

There is a movement in Marion County to consolidate governments (at least townships), but the DEMOCRATS keep fighting it because they don't want to lose their power base in Center Township and the mafia criminals that control it.

Gary R. Welsh said...

concerned taxpayer, Lawrence is incorporated into the City of Indianapolis. Lawrence voters participate in our mayoral election and elect council members from within Lawrence to the city-county council.

Unknown said...

I'm convinced you have two types of politicians in Lawrenced - Incompetent Democrats and Crooked Republicans. As a Lawrence voter you have to make a choice whether you're better off voting for someone who incompetent or someone who is going to use their position to steal as much as they can from the public coffers. It's a tossup.

M Theory said...

Flynn....it sounds like the town of Lawrence could use a Libertarian in office!