9/11 Remembrance Rally in Wasilla, AK – September, 11th 2010

There has been an ongoing glitch in the system for the families of fallen first responders. The health benefits that cover families of our state employees are only covered until the end of the month that their loved one has died. If they are killed the last week of the month, the surviving spouse has yet another problem to figure out during their grief. Their health insurance can be null and void before the funeral occurs.

OK, so glitches happen. I’m sure that’s how a few families have felt. Oh, look! A glitch! No. It’s devastating on top of devastation, so a few useful people in Juneau thought some legislation was in order.

Alaskans, I know what you’re thinking. How is this a controversy? Is it some outrageous amount of money that we just can’t afford? No. That would be the $5 million kept in the budget for the Knik Arm boondoggle bridge and the $18.8 million kept in for the .7-mile-long U-Med road project — for just this year. This glitch-fixing bill has a fiscal note of only $174,000 for 2017. Legislators have taken in almost three times more than that in per diem in the last month, and a fair amount of them don’t even show up to work.

Sen. Lesil McGuire said that the state shouldn’t pay for the full insurance benefit. She said beneficiary families of the slain firefighters and police officers should have some “skin in the game.” She said she uses this philosophy with her child and it works “100 percent of the time.” He is required to invest some money for a toy he wants to ensure he will take care of it, rather than her just giving it to him.

“The beneficiary will pick up a percentage. It could be an 85/15 ratio or an 80/20 ratio or it could be 50/50 or it could be 75/25. I like that idea,” she said. “I think that there should be skin in the game.”

Dear reader, I am using this space to let you know the restraint I am showing by not writing what you’re thinking.

Sen. Bill Wielechowski pointed out the $1.5 million that had been approved for a new security for the Capitol building.

“I can’t think of something that would be more important than providing health care to spouses and kids of deceased firefighters and police officers,” he said. “I just have a hard time finding something … and to say ‘you need skin in the game’? Well, they’ve given their lives … they’ve given their lives protecting the state. They’ve been murdered while on the job. I think they’ve given enough skin in the game.”

It got weirder. Frankly, I wish there were a phone app that would translate Sen. Charlie Huggins: “Don’t let your mouth overload your hummingbird rear, right?” And, “Some would say it’s socialist, all right?” He said he had been a “trigger puller” in the military and offered to show some scars to prove he really cares about these families.

Sorry, Charlie. The men and women who serve our state don’t need to see your scars. They need to know that when they put on their uniform and head out to work, if the very thinkable tragedy befalls them the state will take care of their families in the immediate interim. Maybe it’s just me, or anyone with half a lick of sense in their hummingbird heinie, but it would seem members of our law enforcement showing up to a domestic violence call or a firefighter running into a fire shouldn’t have to stop and think if their response is worth their families losing health benefits. Good grief, can you believe this is what has to be explained to fix a $174,000 glitch?

When tragedy happens and one of our public safety servants is killed, we all grieve. The biggest flag you’ve ever seen has flown from a ladder during the funeral service for one of the fallen. The support of first responders from around the country is tremendous and our politicians line up to tip their hats and offer “thoughts and prayers.”

“Thoughts and prayers” are really more for the politician offering them than they are for the families laying to rest their loved ones.

There’s really no shock and awe to this latest episode of dysfunctional politics. It’s pretty typical. Trust me, I get why it grows tiresome to follow along, because you run out of outrage. The Republican majority in Juneau doesn’t blink to buy themselves the fanciest automatic garbage cans in their new bells-and-whistles digs, but if you aren’t an oil company, you’re going to get the short end of the stick. We can’t fund education because we have to pay for oil company write-offs. We can’t provide small but needed benefits to senior citizens because we feel the need to pay people to keep studying a bridge, even though we have tens of millions of outdated studies on the shelf. We can’t pay for pre-K because I guess those little moochers don’t have enough skin in the game.