SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Dori: You’re paying Jay Inslee while he tries to find a better job
Mar 4, 2019, 3:09 PM
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announces his run for the 2020 Presidency at A & R Solar on March 1, 2019 in Seattle, Washington. Inslee has been governor since 2013 and was a a member of Congress prior to that. (Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)
(Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)
Now that he has announced his candidacy for president and is officially on the campaign trail, Jay Inslee is gallivanting around the country even more than he was before to give speeches and going on every cable news show that will have him — which is basically just MSNBC and CNN.
As I said on Friday when Inslee announced his campaign, this begs the question, who is paying Inslee on the days that he shirks his duty as our governor and goes off trying to find a better job — the presidency? We the taxpayers pay Jay Inslee $177,000 a year to be our governor. Is it fair for him to get paid for days that he abandons his job as governor in favor of trying for a better gig?
Then there is the matter of Inslee’s lieutenant governor, Cyrus Habib, who “fills in” for him when he’s off campaigning. Cyrus Habib is the guy who was too scared to do his only real job, that of presiding over the State of the State, because our constitution allows people to carry guns at our State Capitol. That shows you the kind of wimpy guy we’ve got running things while Inslee is gone. Habib is also the guy who made fun of worried small business owners on Twitter when the hairdresser bill was being debated.
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So Cyrus Habib, who who already makes a really nice six-figure salary despite refusing to do his job, gets an extra $291 a day every day that Inslee is gone, according to The Seattle Times. If you add all of those extra days onto his salary of about $104,000, it works out to a pretty hefty paycheck. And it’s the taxpayers who cover that.
Can anyone explain to me why Jay Inslee, or his campaign, don’t pay that $291? Don’t you think it should be their duty to pay a guy to do Inslee’s job while he is out looking for a better job?
Let’s say that you work at Microsoft and a high-tech company in Silicon Valley has an opening for a higher-paying job. Do you think you could tell your boss that you’re going to go down there for an interview on a weekday, without taking a sick or vacation day, and still want to get paid by Microsoft for that day? What do you think your reception would be from your boss?
Well, we the people are the boss of the governor. And yet, we put up with that.
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