The Post-Crescent Asks the Wrong Questions

A recent article in the Appleton Post–Crescent shows very clearly the way that the climate of opinion created by the radical right has distorted our public discussion.  The paper is running a series of detailed and well-written articles about salaries in our public institutions.  The first article in the series deals with salaries at Fox Valley Technical College. The article focuses mainly on the very large overages earned by a few of FVTC’s teachers, and it is true that a few teachers seem to have earned a great deal of money.

The article recognizes but does not emphasize that the teachers who earned these overages were able to do so for two reasons.  The first is that the current recession has created a huge demand for the training classes that FVTC offers.  “Overages” are additional compensation earned by employees of FVTC for work that they perform beyond what is required under their contracts.  A teacher is required to teach a certain number of class hours each week under his or her contract, and when the teacher teaches more hours than those required, he or she is entitled to be paid for the extra work.  When the demand for training exceeds the number of hours that the teachers can teach under their contracts – as it has in the current recession – someone must be found to teach the additional classes, or the demand will not be met.  In that case, people who need job training will not receive it, and employers’ needs for skilled workers will go unfulfilled.

If FVTC is to meet the demand for training in this situation, it must either hire new teachers or ask the existing faculty to teach more hours.  Asking the additional faculty to teach more hours is much cheaper, because when new faculty are hired, FVTC must pay their benefits as well as their salaries, but when existing faculty are used, only the salaries must be paid.  So, by paying the overages, FVTC chose a more economical alternative, and as taxpayers, we should be pleased by that.

The second reason for the concentration of overage payments in a few teachers’ hands is that the union contract under which the teachers are employed specifies that the most senior teachers be given the first opportunities to work overtime.  It does appear that a few teachers may have abused that privilege.  That is unfortunate, but it is not really of much concern to us as taxpayers.  As taxpayers, we want to know that our tax dollars are being well spent in the sense that we are receiving the services that we are paying for and that costs are being well managed.  In the case of FVTC, we want to know whether the institution is providing the training that makes it possible for our people to obtain good jobs and for our local companies to obtain the workers they need. We also want to know whether FVTC has done a good job managing the cost of providing the training. No one doubts that FVTC has performed admirably.  Certainly, the Post- Crescent raised no question about this in its article.  In fact, most people in our community will agree that FVTC is one of the jewels of the Fox Cities.  We are definitely getting good value for our money.

The Post-Crescent’s article does not see this simple fact because it asks the wrong questions.  It professes to be an article addressed to taxpayers concerning the ways in which their tax money is being spent, but it actually focuses on issues of no concern to taxpayers.  The writer of the article appears to be concerned primarily to write an exposé about the excessive compensation that few faculty members receive by abusing the terms of a union contract.  The writer does not even ask – much less answer – the question of whether we as taxpayers are receiving value for our money.

I do not really fault of the Post-Crescent for the mistaken emphasis of the article.  It was written in the climate of opinion created by the radical right.  In that climate of opinion, institutions that use tax dollars are always seen as wasteful, and pointing out what appears to be an improper use of tax money is an effective way of stimulating resentment of those institutions among the taxpayers.  In the long run, that resentment leads to a decline in support for the institutions, and that is an important goal of the radical right, which always wants to reduce the activities of government.  

I do not suggest that the writer of the article was primarily concerned to stimulate taxpayer resentment or to reduce community support for FVTC, but he chose to answer only questions that are important in the climate of opinion created by the radical right, and by doing so, he was inevitably led to ignore the really important question, which is whether we as taxpayers are receiving good value for our money.  Are we getting something that is worth the money we are paying for it?  If not, we should consider other uses for our money.  Otherwise, we should continue to pay for what we see as a good value.  The question of the proper distribution of overage payments among the faculty is not a problem for us as taxpayers.  It may be a problem for the president of that institution Dr. Susan May.  That is what we pay her for, but it is not a problem for us. 

If we want answers that really matter to us as taxpayers, we have to ask the right questions, and to do so, we have to escape from the current climate of opinion.  It is a trap laid for us by the radical right, and until we escape from that trap, we will never be able to make good decisions.