Time to tie up a couple of loose ends from earlier editorials.
Poorly timed raise: In March, we advised the state Legislature to complete its work, including passage of state budgets and progress to fully fund education as mandated by the state Supreme Court, before the state’s independent Citizens Commission on Salaries for Elected Officials took action on its proposal to increase the salaries of state officials, including legislators.
Missed that deadline.
Some lawmaker knew it wasn’t going to look good to be seen struggling to pass budgets during a special session when the pay raises were announced. Prior to the commission’s final decision last week, Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, asked the panel to scale back the increase to 4.8 percent, equal to what most state employees are expected to receive once a budget is passed. The commission, citing the need to ignore politics, kept to their proposal and gave legislators an 11 percent increase. The pay raise takes effect over the next two Septembers.
That decision wasn’t in legislators’ hands, but each lawmaker can now make an individual choice; until the Legislature has fully completed work on education funding to the satisfaction of the Supreme Court, a process likley to continue next year, we’d like to see lawmakers return their increase in pay to the state or donate it to charity. They could do so privately, and some may already plan on it, but a pledge could help restore some public goodwill.
Tubman on the $20: The campaign to move Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill and replace him with a woman has selected its final candidate following an online poll.
The Women on 20s campaign hopes to see abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the $20 by 2020 when the 19th Amendment giving women the vote celebrates its centennial. A petition with Tubman’s name was sent to President Obama, but the final decision would be made by the Treasury Department, which bumped Grover Cleveland off the $20 in favor of Jackson nearly 100 years ago.
Being honored on U.S. currency can’t go only to those who are spotless before history; we’d be left with so few options. With the exception of the $5 bill, our currency, from $1 to $100, honors men who owned or held authority over slaves. However, Jackson’s standing in history is marred by his ruthless enforcement of the Indian Enforcement Act of 1830. The act led to the Trail of Tears that drove American Indians from their ancestral homelands.
But this is more about honoring Tubman and who she represents than removing Jackson. Tubman, in the years before Civil War, was the Underground Railroad “conductor” who lead hundreds of slaves from southern plantations north to freedom. During the war she continued her work as a cook, nurse and spy for the Union Army.
The choice of Tubman honors the role played by women and African Americans in U.S. history, history that deserves a reminder in our purses and pockets.
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