Sidebar: 'Good People'

Back in 2009, I wrote a series of posts under the title of The Value Proposition, after going through a training session at work.  Part One was about the training and how we all have 'value propositions' when it comes to customer service, where attracting and retaining good people can really make a difference. 

I posted in Part Two about the nonsense in Albany at that time -- a coup, some ethically challenged members, and a businessman with a lot of money injecting himself into the process, all because of a BlackBerry.
And, in Part Three, I looked at bipartisan cooperation in other state legislatures, to see what the functional gangs were doing; one of the primary comparisons was with New Mexico.  Here was my conclusion then:

So what can we learn from all of this? Clearly New Mexico and New York are vastly different in terms of size, population, and issues. What the Legislatures should have in common, though, is putting the best interests of the State first, then their own constituent interests somewhere further down the line, and at the very end of the line, their own self-serving interests.

I'm still in the same place today was I was three years ago. Things have gotten somewhat better in Albany, but here are a couple of very telling statistics, from the Syracuse Post-Standard, about our current situation: 

• for just the Central New York area, it's likely that eight of the thirteen lawmakers will be unopposed, in many cases due to the amount of money and power held by the incumbents
• From 1999 to 2010, 96% of the Legislature's incumbents were re-elected

 Is giving these folks a raise really necessary?