….unless, of course, you are a government-supported employee.
ILLINOIS—Here’s a new low in how state employees can get away with crimes the rest of us would be imprisoned over.
According to scant information available through various media and Department of Justice (DOJ) sources, Ron Smith, Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice Deputy Director of Operations, had a few too many at an area watering hole and then chose to drive his state-provided vehicle home.
Here is a snippet from St. Louis-based media KMOV, who was quoting from “a report released Monday, December 3, 2012″ about the matter:
Investigators found Smith drank the equivalent of eight 12-ounce bottles of beer on a Sunday at a sports bar, then drove a state vehicle. He’s been suspended for three days.
Smith hasn’t returned a message seeking comment left through the department’s spokeswoman Monday.
Another juvenile justice employee mentioned in the report who drank part of one alcoholic beverage at the same bar received counseling on the use of state vehicles.
It was revealed to us by a source who knows of the situation that the whole thing was caught on videotape at the bar, and that Smith was with a female co-worker, both of them quite inebriated when they left together, which video clearly shows…including driving off in his state vehicle.
At the end of the article was the brief comment from Deputy Inspector General Erin Bonales, who was paraphrased after having opined, “the office is thankful nobody was hurt.”
Really?
I guess a three-day suspension didn’t hurt anyone. I can’t see that a guy who makes just at $120,000 taxpayer-funded dollars a year would miss out on a whole like….assuming he was suspended WITHOUT pay. The article doesn’t say.
In fact, the article, as well as anything else we can find about it, doesn’t say A LOT. It doesn’t say when this occurred. It doesn’t say where. It doesn’t say even in what county (although his stats show he’s from Woodford County. I didn’t even know where that was; I had to look it up; it’s just north and east of Peoria.) It doesn’t say how many beers he had on his “beery drive” (talk about minimizing something….that headline is INANE). And it doesn’t say, above all, whether he was stopped, breathalyzed, arrested, taken in, posted bond, and lost his license. You know, all those things that would happen if you or I were to have gone to a sports bar, tanked up on a few cold ones, then took a “beery drive.” As you can see here, there’s no indication of an arrest and/or charges having been filed. Once again a state employee gets preferential treatment for doing something that the rest of us—those who pay his paycheck—would NOT escape from unscathed.
I was taken to task this morning on Facebook for ragging about publicly-paid people getting by with ineffective punishments while people who don’t have a “good government job” would be hemmed up and potentially lose everything they have. Frankly, I don’t give a shit what people think about our stance on this—it is egregious that there are two sets of rules for people of different strata…and believe me when I tell you that state employees are on one very high strata, and the rest of us are on all the lower ones. It is my opinion that if a person has a state job, he should be held to a HIGHER standard of obeying the law than those of us in the private sector. Why? Because those of us who fund their lives and livelihood do so under threat of arrest and having OUR lives and livelihood ruined if we don’t! Look at it like this: No one forces you to go out and buy our paper. Either you do, or you don’t, but no one comes along behind you to check and see if you have, and if you haven’t, they subsequently fine you and assess penalties, and if you can’t pay it, you begin to lose everything you have. However, try that with taxes. Don’t pay your taxes on any level and see how far you get. You will ultimately become the subject of a door-knowck by people with badges (and now, guns) who will collect that money whether you “like” what you’re paying for or don’t.
This is the objection we have to these people—the taxpayer-funded, public-sector workers—being left unpunished when they are, as in this instance, and as in that with Danny Clayton. It’s not fair. We don’t have a choice in funding them. And then this is what they do (go out and drink and drive) and not the first thing is done about it.
Illinois is overburdened with public-sector employees. Every time a politician loses an election, and especially if he has a “D” behind his name, you can bet that someone in a position higher up is going to get that booted pol a job on the taxpayer’s teat somewhere, even if they have to create that job. This has been the norm for so long that we now have whole agencies that didn’t exist just a few years ago. And everyone wonders why Illinois is one of those states that’s in a “death spiral.” I think this pretty well explains it, don’t you?