'Kiss local fiscal responsibility' goodbye

Voters of the Blackstone Valley:

I would please hope that each and every voter in the Blackstone Valley will contact their respective representatives in the State House today and tell them not to vote for the respective bills before the House and Senate granting the teachers' union the right to have binding arbitration if the union and the school committee can not reach a salary contract accord with their local school districts. This would be a win-win decision for the teachers' union and the death knell for the state financially.

I suspect probably most of the residents of the Blackstone Valley have noticed we are in a recession (some classify it here in Rhode Island as a Depression) and that many, many people have lost their jobs and employment locally. Some may have lost their jobs permanently due to this economy. If our elected officials allow these bills to pass, almost total financial control of each and every towns' and cities' budgets will be lost to a three-member arbitration panel and effectively to just one non-elected and probably non-resident person (the deciding arbitrator of a three-member arbitration panel). The arbitrator will only have to decide which offer is the better of the ones presented and then we the voters will have to come up with the money to pay for this. Since most arbitrators' services are utilized to settle union (in this state) contracts, guess where the arbitrators leanings will be?

That is why we have always had local control of our respective budgets so that local people, aware of local situations and local facors can make economic decisions based upon these local issues. Now our legislature is trying to strip each community of this cherished right.

Please remember that teacher strikes in Rhode Island are already illegal and should any school committee ever have the backbone to force this issue, they should fire striking teachers for breaking the law and thus voiding their contractual obligations to be citizens of good repute. Almost every teacher strike that I can remember has been about teachers' pay although the teachers unions will usually raise the issue that it is about the welfare of the children.

If our state elected leaders vote to give binding arbitration to the teachers' union, you can kiss local fiscal responsibility away as it will no longer exist. Since over 80 percent of every school committee's budget is either spent upon salary or benefits, why should teachers' unions negotiate in good faith if they can only gain more from binding arbitration? Why have a local school committee if over 80 percent of their financial responsibility is transferred away from them to a single arbitrator?

I urge every voter to contact their elected officials and tell them that you will no longer support them at the next election if they vote for this travesty of our rights. Then, if our representatives do vote to support these bills, I then ask every voter to hold them accountable come election time next November 2010. The next couple of days may be our last and final chance to save our state from total financial collapse. Don't lose this right and opportunity.

Richard K. Foster

Lincoln