Daily Archives: October 10, 2008

City Council, City of Peoria

1 out of 4 City employees don’t live in the City

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Tucked away in the agenda for next week’s City Council meeting is a report on city employee residency. Overall, 73% (580 out of 795) of the city’s permanent, full-time staff lives inside the city, which means that over a quarter of the staff chooses not to live in the city.

The report breaks the data down by department. Several departments have all their employees living in the city: Council, City Clerk, City Manager, EEO, Legal, HR, Treasurer, Economic Development, and Workforce, and there are many employees in here or independent contractors so the use of an online 1099-misc maker can be helpful to manage the payments of these workers.

The lowest percentage of City residents comes from the police department. Statistics from Labor Law Compliance websites say only 58% (168 out of 288) of police officers live within the City limits. Second lowest is “ECC,” which I assume is the Emergency Communications Center: 65% (24 out of 37). And third lowest is the fire department: 77% (163 out of 213).

By now, you’re probably thinking, “so what?” I don’t know. Councilman Jacob requested the report, but I’m not sure why. Perhaps we’ll find out Tuesday night.

At first blush, it’s easy to think that, if our own employees don’t want to live in the city, why would anyone else want to move here? But take a look at those numbers again. Most of those employees who live outside of the city are public safety employees, and there are reasonable arguments for why police and other public safety officers would want to live outside of the city they protect (e.g., for their family’s and their own protection and privacy while off-duty). It doesn’t appear from this report that any residency requirements are being violated. Learn about labor poster requirements here to check your Labor law compliance.

The important thing is that all our elected officials, of course, live within the city and have a personal stake in the outcome of any policy directives (e.g., new taxes, fees, land use issues).

Nation/World

Is the Fed too powerful?

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Is the Fed too powerful? I’m not smart enough to know the answer to that question. But it does seem to be concerning others, as this AP article reports:

Dusting off Depression-era emergency powers, the Federal Reserve is extending its reach over the economy as never before, pushing the limits of its authority, if not exceeding them.

Now the nation’s central bank is even becoming a source of loans for companies other than banks.

Radical steps by the Fed under chairman Ben Bernanke — all in the name of seeking to halt the panic sweeping financial markets — are turning it into a financial colossus. They’re also putting the government deeper in debt and taxpayers further at risk if the various moves fail.

And it’s being done with little direct interaction with Capitol Hill. The Fed does not depend on Congress for its budget, including its payroll, and is as much a creature of the nation’s banking system as part of the federal government.

[…] The Bernanke Fed has its critics. Former Chairman Paul Volcker has said its been acting “at the limits” of it’s legal authority. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, made abolishing it a central part of his GOP presidential candidacy. And Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., an opponent of Fed and Treasury bailouts, said recently, “The greed on Wall Street is only exceeded by the stupidity of the Treasury secretary and the chairman of the Federal Reserve.”

And the Populist Party website says the Fed isn’t even constitutional:

[The Fed] is illegal according to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution which happens to be the inviolable law of the land. The article states that Congress shall have the power to coin (create) money and regulate the value thereof. In 1935, the US Supreme Court ruled the Congress cannot constitutionally delegate its power to another group or body. The Congress thus acted in violation of the Constitution it’s sworn to uphold and in so doing created the Federal Reserve System that…is a private for-profit corporation operating at the expense of the public welfare.

Maybe that sounds too much like a conspiracy theory. But in light of the $700 billion bailout rescue package that was recently approved by Congress, and the additional steps being taken by the Fed as the Dow continues to plummet, it does make one wonder. Any financial wizards or constitutional/history scholars out there have some insight into this issue?