So I work for Portland Public Schools...

... and as Oregon passes two laws to increase taxes due to necessary budget cuts I don't know what to do...

First, let me make a small digression. I agree with the proposal to increase the tax on individuals who make more than $125k and households that make more than $250k. I disagree strongly with the proposal to tax over 2/3 of the corporations in Oregon, cause I am going to end up having my taxes increased to help cover their bottom lines. You can say you're not taxing the poor or middle class, but that is exactly what this tax increase is going to do... It sucks... but that is not the purpose of this post...

PPS wastes money like you wouldn't believe.Well maybe you would, and the attitude of management is that they are not interested in cost saving measures because doing it the hard way gives them job security. I asked a manager in my office why they didn't simply put the information that they hand out to us on line on something like "google calendar". Their first reply was because that would require everyone to have computer access. When I pointed out that it wasn't the case, they said, "Oh, well, it is job security. I've remade the wheel at least nineteen times."

That is how things work in government. There is a mindset that sickens me cause we the tax payer end up getting stuck with the bill and because there is no other way to get services to kids we end up paying anyway. My gut tells me that an independent auditor could probably save PPS over $100k per year in our department alone.

That does lead to another issue though, cause we have a private contractor working with us and they treat their workers like shit cause all they care about is the bottom line. They blow off law suits they create and delay and delay, dong what only big business with deep pockets can do. I am not happy with them either.

I don't want to see cut throat save money at the expense of your employees approaches. But I also don't want to see waste like I am seeing. Somewhere there has to be some common sense middle ground but for the life of me it eludes me.