Stupid Time For Pay Increases

Jon Ralston of the Las Vegas Sun has a story about how the City of Las Vegas is giving large pay raises to some supervisors and other employees.
From the Sun: Unlike many of my Fourth Estate pals, I try to give government the benefit of the doubt.
Sure, I have a certain cynicism imbued after a quarter-century of covering politics. But I don’t default to the position that all politicians are inherently corrupt or all public employees are overpaid sloths or all government spending is obviously wasteful.
That’s just so facile, so bereft of nuance or contemplation. So, I try to give politicians, staffers and, yes, government a chance.
But when I learn that a cultural affairs manager at Las Vegas City Hall quietly received a nearly 20 percent raise during this recession to a new salary of $107,000, I fear my goodwill is misplaced. When I learn that four dozen other employees also received pay increases as the city demanded concessions and cut services — a total cost of $265,000 — I wonder if these people have any sense at all. And when I learn that the average salary of those who received raises was — please put down any sharp objects — $77,557 — and that the average salary of those employees is now $82,458, I am almost speechless.
Almost.
City Manager Betsy Fretwell defended the raises on “Face to Face” on Wednesday by saying that those staffers were making less than those they supervise and/or were being paid less than those similarly situated in other governments, according to a comprehensive compensation study.
I won’t even posit the heretical thought that if so, then maybe the underlings should have taken pay cuts during the worst economic downturn in Las Vegas history. But what possible good reason could there be for not holding off on these increases — if indeed they are even merited — until the economy improves? I can only imagine how anyone unemployed or underemployed in the private sector would react to this news. (I have a feeling we will find out.)
If you are wondering what other kinds of employees received these raises, they ran the gamut from secretaries to management analysts to engineers (one received a more than 25 percent increase to $121,000) to jail personnel to executive assistants. (I bet you didn’t know there are nine “special assistants to the council.”)
Benefit of the doubt, where have you gone? http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/dec/09/city-las-vegas-gives-raises-during-recession/?hpop
It certainly appears that the City of Las Vegas and some of it's employees lack situational awareness and they really don't care.