May 16 Daily News editorial

Silence is golden — and cheaper

Thumbs down: A crack already may be forming in the state’s hiring freeze. Gov. Chris Gregoire’s office has asked for exemption from the freeze in order to hire a new speech writer, according to a blog by Tacoma News Tribune’s Joe Turner. Turner reports that the governor’s speech writer retired at the end of April, leaving Gregoire in desperate straits. Pearse Edwards, Gregoire’s communications director, told Turner that filling the $63,000-a-year position was “crucial.”

The exemption would seem to be close to a sure thing. Turner was told that the governor’s budget office makes the call. Too bad. We’d just as soon have Gregoire forgo the expenditure and write her own speeches. Or better still, just cancel the many speeches Edwards said she had scheduled over the next several days. A little quiet time in Olympia wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Setting a timely example

Thumbs up: Bernie Machen, president of the 50,000-student University of Florida campus in Gainesville, is well paid. Manchen’s annual compensation for 2008 totaled $731,811, according to Associated Press writer Ron Word. The UF president also is a very generous man. Manchen is giving $285,000 — more than a third of his pay last year — back to the university for a scholarship program he founded to assist low-income students who might otherwise be unable to afford a college education.

With major universities here and in other states raising tuition to offset the impact of both the recession and declining state appropriations, Machen offers a particularly timely example for his peers. As one student who will benefit from his generosity remarked, “He does talk the talk and walk the walk.”

Fleecing taxpayers

Thumbs down: Oregon corrections officials spent $773,000 last year on a contract with Coca-Cola to provide soda pop for the some 14,000 inmates in the state prison system. We’d bet few taxpayers knew about that expenditure. That’ll soon change, and our guess is that the practice of providing free soda pop to inmates will change, as well.

The Associated Press (May 12 article) reports that a government watchdog group called Common Sense Oregon has awarded its first “Oregon Golden Fleece Award” to the folks in corrections for spending more than three-quarters of a million tax dollars on soft drinks for inmates. Ross Day, the group’s executive director, said the money could be better spent on hiring more state troopers or teachers. We agree. It’s just common sense.

One decent offer

Thumbs up: We’re always quick to bash the big, bad drug manufacturers for their real and imagined contributions to our medical bills. So it’s only fair to applaud a drug company’s above-and-beyond contribution to the public good. Pfizer Inc., which just happens to be the world’s biggest drugmaker, this week committed to making more than 70 of its prescription drugs available at no cost, for up to a year, to Americans who have lost their jobs and health insurance since Jan. 1.

The New York-based drugmaker has not put a limit on spending for the program, and has no idea of what it will end up costing. We’d guess there will be significant costs. The prescriptions include such popular and profitable brands as Lipitor. Pfizer will derive some PR value from the program, no question. And, as Associated Press business writer Linda A. Johnson noted, it may help keep some people loyal to Pfizer brands. No matter. It’s a decent offer that will bring some peace of mind to a lot of recently unemployed.