Category: Cartoons, Rants a.k.a. Commentary || By

Make no mistake --- the recession is hitting local municipalities hard. As one official recently told me, when people get laid off, the first bills they stop paying are taxes and sewage.

After all, Duquesne Light can shut off your electricity, but the borough can't shut off your toilet.

If you don't pay those bills, the worst a municipality can do is lien your house or turn you over to a collection agency, and if you're facing foreclosure and bankruptcy, what do you care?

That's forced many Mon-Yough communities to make hard, unpopular decisions. The city of McKeesport laid off 10 employees and emptied its reserve fund. Versailles eliminated its police department.

North Versailles Township commissioners also had some tough decisions to make. Revenues were way down in 2008. They couldn't pay some of their bills.

None of these problems developed quickly. But their reaction was certainly abrupt. They told all of their employees last week that they wouldn't be paid for up to eight weeks ... yet they expect them to keep coming into work!

Why can't they be paid? Because the township didn't complete its annual audit on time, so it couldn't get a routine tax-anticipation loan that would cover expenses during the first quarter of the year.

Almost every municipality and school district receives these short-term lines of credit at the beginning of each fiscal year, but North Versailles commissioners screwed the pooch.

Or to put it more accurately, they screwed their police officers, dispatchers, public works employees, office employees ... well, you get the picture.

Instead of tending to their responsibilities, according to published reports and local talk radio, two factions of North Versailles commissioners have been busy fighting for control of the township.

The same gang also couldn't get the township's annual budget passed until four weeks after it was due.

Because they can't play nice, 35 to 40 good people are staring at empty checking accounts and wondering whether they should skip the gas bill or the mortgage payment this month. Six part-time police officers were furloughed altogether.

Now some board members want East Allegheny School District to help pay the salaries of the laid-off part-timers. School officials are demurring. Can you blame them? Would you want to step into this mess?

Other reports indicate that Duquesne Light has threatened to cut power to North Versailles' various buildings (the lights in the parking lot at the municipal building have already been turned off, according to one news story) and that vendors (including the garbage collection service!) haven't been paid in weeks.

These problems weren't caused by an act of God. They weren't caused by the economy. They were caused by people who put political vendettas ahead of their sworn duties.

They were caused by a ridiculous power struggle (for control of what? North Versailles?! A township of 11,000 people?!) that didn't have to happen.

Petty fights are not unusual in local politics, but this level of dysfunction is surprising even by Mon Valley standards.

Several commissioners are up for re-election this year. If they run in the primary, then North Versailles voters need to speak loud and clear where it counts --- not just at commissioners' meetings and on talk shows, but at the ballot box. And two years from now --- when the rest of the board is up for re-election --- they need to speak up again.

North Versailles taxpayers and employees, you deserve better than this.