How many voluntary pay cuts will it take for essential employees to calm down and go back to work?
We say let's find out, starting with Government House.
It is time for this administration to stop looking the other way while teachers, policemen, firefighters and others demonstrate in very real ways their disappointment and disgust with the nepotism and self-serving behavior displayed by top officials in the Turnbull-James administration.
We are beginning to feel like a broken record, repeating over and over that the leaders of this community need to lead by example.
If some teacher – responsible for the well-being of our children – who is making $25,000 a year while supporting children of his or her own needs to cinch his or her belt, how about the governor, his chief of staff and his primary financial adviser leading the belt-cinching parade.
Juel Molloy and Rudolph Krigger Sr. would have done well to refuse their $13,000 pay increases months ago. In truth, they should have turned those raises down before they ever went into effect, but they certainly should have done that once the increases became public and the response was so overwhelmingly — and angrily — negative. It is surprising to us that they didn't.
Molloy and Krigger might deserve to make $79,000 a year if this were a perfect world and the territory were on solid financial footing. They are smart, hard-working public servants. That is not the point. These islands are in an uproar over the double standard being set by the governor and his top aides – teachers are calling in sick, civilian Police Department employees are staging job actions, as are police and firefighters. Meanwhile, the governor continues to defend these indefensible raises and to hire people for superfluous positions such as public information officers.
Are the governor, his advisers and his Cabinet members deaf to the cries of "unfair" that are coming from the people? Their "let them eat cake" response suggests that is the case.
It is time for our elected leaders to set the right example. That is the only way to win back the trust and goodwill of the people they are trying to lead.