John Brummett writes that there are ways — as was demonstrated by Game and Fish action last week — to encourage even independent agencies to reduce the fleets of vehicles provided employees for non-work purposes. The more diffuse governing boards of the collegiate kingdoms may be harder to persuade. Time will tell.

This is an opportunity for me to repeat a decent point that has so far been only made by a global-warming denying rightwing nut on the Game and Fish Commission. Some 130 employees of Game and Fish, to name a few, are about to lose the significant perk of a free state automobile — with the significant perk of free maintenance that entails — for commuting to work. “Let’s get out the violins on that one,” writes Brummett.

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Well, sure, most of the rest of us provide our own transportation. Many of us pay for our parking downtown, too, something no state employee is required to do as far as I know. But still. This perk amounted to a pay enhancement. It has been enjoyed for years. It’s part of the package that might figure into whether an employee stays with a state agency or goes. (That is, it does if you don’t believe all state employees are calcified in place, stirred to action only long enough to retire for a few days so they can be re-hired and doubledip.) These employees have been given an abrupt pay cut and the one dissenting Game and Fish commissioner said he was troubled a bit by that. Yes, they are still employed, no small blessing these days. But many of them aren’t to blame for a policy that substituted cars for a rational and better pay plan.

The vehicle reduction was called for — a necessity even. But it’s a cold world where the recipients of a pay cut are to be yukked at because they work for government. How I wish the FOI applied to private enterprise and the perks extended to lucky ducks of the private sector — bonused and cosseted and fed at company expense, sometimes even in money-losing years when those on the bottom end of the pay scale get fired. No, I’ll hold my chuckles. There but for fortune …

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