COUNTY: Consider the third option

Open letter to the Kootenai County Treasurer:

I appreciated your newsletter concerning the constraints you are under. But when you make the blanket statement that there are only two ways to reduce taxes - reduced services and/or increased efficiency - you missed one, the one that always gets missed by people at the top of their organizations: a pay cut for themselves.

Out here in the real world of Kootenai County it is a fact of life that most small business owners just take a pay cut. They do not reduce their service. They may in fact increase their service. And they do not operate less efficiently. They just work harder for less. And they do this because there is less capacity on the part of their customers to pay.

One of the key sources of public resentment of government is the general insensitivity of those in the top positions to respond to economic hardship through their own sacrifice. We the people have to do it. But all of you seem immune to it. In fact the thought of it never seems to enter your mind.

This condition is mirrored in the private sector where corporate executives and boards of directors maintain their own standards of living by dumping the pay cuts on workers and calling it "increased efficiency." Many at the top find that they are even able to brag about this.

This attitude in government is what is driving the Tea Party. This attitude in the private sector is what is driving the Occupy Movement, the 99 percenters. Both movements stem from the same condition. Both are legitimate for the same reason.

When people in positions of power in both the public sector and the private sector recognize the need to sacrifice for the greater good we will be a better people, a healthier economy and a stronger country. I am happy to pay my share toward the creation of that condition.

STEPHEN D. BRUNO

Hayden