I live in a deep red county east of I 95 in N.C. I work for the sheriffs dept.I know exactly how these folks will operate because i got a front row seat during the budget battle in our county for the county budget that we just went through .When I say it was a laugh a minute just believe me it was. I'm friends on Facebook with a lot of the personal from the sheriffs dept and get to see daily the fox news dribble all over my page.Head below the orange thing for the rest!
So July was the time for our commissioners to meet and decide a budget for the coming year and it was a fantastic object lesson for republican ideas meeting reality.Our county is a poor rural county mostly farming.We are right next to a county where a huge military base sits with lots of people and commerce. Everybody wants to live in that county because it has great schools,police,roads ect. So our county is jealous of that county and try to keep up with them lol. During the 2000's we built a couple of new schools doubled our sheriffs dept and basically spent our selves into the ditch.Sound familiar? All on credit like the gulf war. Sound familiar ?
So its 2014.We have a problem in our county attracting good people with the right skill set to work in our schools and sheriffs dept because we cant pay shit really.So here comes the commissioners meeting.A whole bunch of teabaggers got elected in 2010 ,2012 to the leadership in our county and they are going to cut taxes so a few huge farming operations will get tax breaks on their real estate holdings.Well that's when this conservative utopia had a seizure.
The dept heads like our sheriff understand that if he wants to get adequate staffing he has to pay decent money or he keeps training new folks who work a year than leave to work in counties that pay a lot more than ours and this has been going on for years. The county schools have the same issues as well .So here comes the meeting and all those tea baggers proposed cutting budgets all over the place to get tax breaks..The dept heads than start screaming about raises for staff for retention reasons,than the commissioners start screaming about the bonds for the new buildings we built 7 years ago are coming due because we never prepared for the inevitable,than the dept heads scream back about your kids will be under-served in the schools if we don't increase wages,or crime will sky rocket if we don't keep deputies on the road ect ect ect ect repeat...
The end result Tax rate increase and pay study commissioned to help keep good personal happy about working for the county. Thats what will happen nationally .The conservatives have to bring home the bacon or they will get fired period.They will gnash their teeth and snarl but now like in my county they have no one else to blame they will start to do the people's business out of necessity.