Rudyard News

Area businesses are beginning to feel the impact of Michigan's business tax which debuted in January.

The Kinross Township Board has collected another $23,000.00 in bennies from the Township Taxpayers that include Life Insurance, Pension, and Prescription Reimbursement. Prescription Reimbursement? What's that you ask? Not what you might think. This reimbursement is for Board members who choose to get name brand prescriptions rather than generic. That's right, they choose to get the more expensive kind and get reimbursed at your expense. Ed DeWitt received an astonishing $1,739.60 in reimbursements for the name brand prescriptions. Vicki Ulrich was the next highest with $1,502.76. That's not including their spouse reimbursements that are estimated to be another $2,500.00 more.

I'll bet your glad knowing that you pay for these Board members Pensions as well. $11,000.00 in Pension for Oberle, Besteman, Ulrich and Dewitt. Full time benefits for part time elected officials. Check out the FOIA information I received from the Township detailing this information. I had to pay another $21.31 for this information. Thank you to the reader that reminded me of these additional benefits.

Adam Smith described the

'invisible hand,' the hand of free commerce that brings magic order and harmony to our lives

.

Thomas Paine wrote of another hand, all too visible and intrusive:

the greedy hand of government.

I couldn’t agree more with Mr. Lawson’s letter from Wednesday, March 5 Evening News.

The idea of taxpayer paid health care coverage for part time elected officials is wrong and must be stopped. In Kinross, township taxpayers paid a whopping $172,000.00 in health Insurance premiums for Board members and their families. Yes that's correct, Kinross taxpayers paid in excess of $172,000.00 in Health Insurance premiums to cover Kinross Township Board members and their families. This is shocking by big city standards let alone a relatively small municipality. To their credit, two Board members declined their Insurance stating they believe they were not entitled to a full time benefit for part time public service. That information and more was provided to me by Kinross Township staff via a Freedom of Information Act request. I had to pay $150.00 to get this information and it can be inspected at www.kinross.biz.

It should not be a surprise to the Township citizens to learn about previous attempts by the public and a few budget conscious Trustees to eliminate full time health care coverage for part time elected officials in 2004. This attempt was backed up by a petition of 120 voters in Kinross. What did the Board do? They tabled the motion and refused to act on it. It’s really not fair to expect people who don’t have insurance themselves to pay for health insurance for part-time elected officials.

So what do we do in a situation like this? We get active and involved in our local government no matter if it is Township or County. We need to go to the meetings, read the meeting minutes and get ready for the next election in November.

Joe Paczkowski

Kincheloe, MI

“You need to let your voice be heard to make changes”

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