Will it be Peabody's "dozing dispatcher" or the "disabled" bodybuilder from the Boston Fire Department that becomes the poster boy for this fall's tax-repeal effort?
Both are worthy candidates with good lawyers and an ability to keep themselves in the public spotlight.
Wednesday's Salem News reported yet another court victory for John Brophy, who's fighting efforts by the Bonfanti administration to remove him from the Peabody Fire Department for sleeping through a 911 call, getting into an altercation with a superior officer at the scene of a fire, failing one drug test and refusing to take another, and putting his job as a plumber ahead of his duties as a firefighter.
City Solicitor John Christopher had plenty of reason to scratch his head following the latest setback in which an Appeals Court judge upheld Brophy's bid for an injunction preventing his dismissal. Falling asleep on the job is usually enough to get anyone fired. But in Massachusetts it takes a lot more than sleeping through an emergency call to get one booted from the public payroll.
As for Boston fire inspector Albert Arroyo, his alleged back injury was sufficient to win him paid disability leave — but not to prevent him from competing in a professional bodybuilding contest. Now, despite the recent, embarrassing revelations, he says he won't return to work without a doctor's note.
According to The Boston Globe, Arroyo had reported "slipping on a staircase and injuring his back on March 21 in the Jamaica Plain firehouse in an accident nobody witnessed at a station where he wasn't assigned to work." It's nonsense like this that has enraged the public to the point an increasing number of voters may feel they have no choice but to repeal the income tax this November in order to send a message to the unions, the courts and Beacon Hill.
The repeal effort has cities and towns particularly worried. According to the Massachusetts Municipal Association, "The income tax ballot question would reduce annual state revenues by about $13 billion or 40 percent ... triggering a state and local fiscal crisis that would force major cuts in municipal services and higher property tax bills and fees."
Not only would cities and towns no longer be able to afford keeping the Brophys and Arroyos on the payroll, they would be forced to make deep cuts in employee salaries and benefits generally — or else eliminate many jobs and some departments entirely.
But then this is where the entitlement mentality that's been allowed to prevail in the public sector for so long has brought us. What's considered public service in other places is viewed as self-service here. And only a fiscal tsunami of the type income-tax repeal would bring, may be capable of convincing those in the Statehouse that change can and must happen.
