Firemen, cops 21st century American saints - beyond scrutiny given to commoners (EDITORIAL)

Firefighters and cops are contemporary American saints, people so virtuous and celebrated they are beyond the realm of normal scrutiny most places. Earlier this year it was reported that 65 of the most highly paid people on the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority payroll were cops - state troopers. 65 of them took home more than the chief executive Alan LeBovidge who got $163k.

The 138 miles (222km) of the Turnpike has no less than 172 cops permanently assigned to it and last year they took home an average $150.5k each.  Of nine Mass Pike employees taking home over $200k all were cops, two lieutenants, six of them sergeants and one a trooper. They were running up fantastic amounts of overtime!

Their pay alone totalled $26m and it was 78% over budgeted pay of $14.5m. The cops with their pensions and cars and radios must be costing $40m to $50m of the Mass Pike's $270m toll revenues, as much as total toll collection costs.

see http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/3961

also earlier http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/1831

The payroll data was published in the local Boston newspapers but not a single reporter, nor a columnist nor an editorialist not any letterwriter, no one in Boston followed up and asked why, what's going on here, does the payment of an average of $150.5k to cops have to be borne by a toll authority, and eventually by tollpayers?

Cops are immune to questioning, it seems, and their takings are not to be discussed in polite company.

California AB254

Firefighters too are treated as though they are another saintly order like police.

This week the Transportation Corridors Agencies (TCA) who run The Toll Roads in southern California were taken to task by the local press for having issued some toll violation notices to firemen who ran the tolls during the brushfires in Santiago Canyon last November. TCA allows toll-free passage to the vehicles of emergency services that register their vehicles and enter into an agreement to only use the open road toll lanes on their way to an actual emergency.

Otherwise they are expected to pay tolls like everyone else and agree to instruct their officers to respect the distinction.

Local emergency services accept the arrangement, but last November some fire crews came in from outside Orange County, and not having their vehicles registered, they got violation notices.  The notices were withdrawn by TCA when the outside fire companies said they'd been on the way to fires.

The North County Times newspaper has been running pieces saying the firefighter saints "shouldn't have to fight tolls."

The newspaper's theme is that firefighters are such special people they shouldn't have to explain themselves like mere mortals when they break the rules. And they shouldn't have have to register their vehicles to get free rides. 

Somehow the onus should be on the toll authority to know when these unregistered vehicles are on the way to an emergency.

There's now legislation (AB254) going through the California legislature to exempt police and firefighters from paying tolls when responding to emergencies. TCA and other toll authorities do that anyway as a matter of policy. All they ask is that vehicles be registered so the violations processing system can be flagged ahead of time to avoid issuing the notices in error.

That's apparently too much to ask of saints.

Orlando where the saints seized the tollroads

The only time we've been threatened with physical violence in 30 years of journalism in this country was after we wrote about the selfishness and arrogance of cops and firefighters in Orlando Florida, after they had taken over tollroads there for a funeral procession of one of their guys without even warning the Orlando Orange County Expressway Authority, owner and manager of the roads.

Without consulting or asking or warning anyone, they simply set up roadblocks at OOCEA ramps and closed the tollroads for a couple of hours to accommodate the funeral procession of one of their own.

It was a tragic death to be sure. The dead saint had been off-duty and he and a passer-by had stopped to help a stranded motorist and another car had hit and killed the two of them. But the local cops and firefighters acted like third world caudillos in simply seizing the roads for the funeral procession, not allowing anyone to plan and time it, or warn the public of road closures.

No one would think to do that for a commoner, a mere mortal.

The passer-by who was killed alongside the firefighter certainly didn't get the kind of sendoff. It was reserved for a member of a saintly class.

The local media criticized the OOCEA when the chief executive at the time Hal Worrall said it was the lack of any warning of the funeral procession that prevented the Authority from planning to minimize disruptions to the public.

Police and firefighter media picked up my comments and I got a spate of angry telephone calls and emails demanding I retract and apologize... one of them threatening to "come after you."

Some of these guys apparently fancy themselves as caudillos!

edfitor TOLLROADSnews 2009-05-13