Eating white elephant in the room

Eating white elephant in the room

Eating white elephant in the room

Debt now stands at more than $ 2.1 billion and rising every day. The development of government services, programs and jobs in the last few decades now as expensive to maintain as it is clearly not sustainable given the economic conditions of our department.
One Bermuda Alliance was elected to office based in part on promises to restore order and a sense of fiscal responsibility to our public spending. But nearly two years, the debt of the island remains a giant white elephant storming around the room.
Anaemic economic growth limit government revenue enhancement options and the ability to fund the public sector expenditure.
With about 20 percent of the labor force working in the public sector Bermuda, even meet government salaries become an increasing challenge.
But any significant recovery in key sectors of the domestic economy may be at least one more year.
It is true that new infrastructure investments in the hospitality sector is imminent as a result of securing rights Bermuda hosting the America's Cup 2017. This will result in almost immediate knock-on effect in the construction and satellite industry. And, in the end, tourism-related businesses ranging from retail to restaurant to taxi will also benefit.
Consolidation rather than expansion is the order of the day in the industrial re / insurance, driver's head of international sectors, and the ongoing wave of mergers and acquisitions will result in job losses and loss of economic activity in the short-term spillover.
The government also can not rely on the type of runaway growth in the offshore sector and industrial natural satellite in the 1980s, 90s and early 21st century, to finance spending, especially to restore the island's wealth.
So borrowing has become increasingly difficult and expensive. Every penny that we borrowed to be paid back, with interest, and Bermuda is no longer look like once it's a sure bet to international donors.
As a result of the economic stagnation of the island which is in progress, the Government also found it more and more difficult to persuade the international credit rating agencies that Bermuda has a credible plan in place to balance the books.
While it quickly became accepted that the job-for-life of the old civil service culture to be part of the past in Bermuda (even among public sector employees), there is no wholesale reduction in staffing levels.
The government so far has avoided the type of austerity measures that hard has become increasingly common in other jurisdictions.
Pay freeze has been substituted for pay cuts, furlough days for layoffs.
This week stand-off between the government and public sector employees on a monthly leaf enforced absence is an impressive exercise in street theater but perhaps not the most constructive method pursue collective bargaining negotiations. Also to win public support for their cause.
Patience is wearing very thin with government employees whose livelihoods escaped the worst damage resulting destabilization of economic contraction of worldwide decline combined with fiscal policy and immigration country bordering on criminal neglect.
The latest disruption to public services, including schools, ferries and buses, has been disturbed and upset thousands of residents.
The government would do well to not confuse the public sector union declaration selfish feeling the actual labor. But, of course, both political parties Bermuda so afraid of alarming the public sector employees - all of them potential voters - who may feel threatened by talk of structural reforms necessary for the original and the civil service which they choose to continue to talk about the subject.
Keep in mind that every person who worked in the public sector is also the taxpayers and consumers of public services. Many of them also believe that public funds are being badly spent; after all, they are witnesses inefficiency every day.
Those who bear the tax dollars pay check public sector is also increasingly impatient with the government is still spending too much, borrowing too much, taxes too much and economises much, too little.



That is why finding a blue ribbon Spending and Government Efficiency Commission has completely ignored (including, of course, the recommendation to reduce the size of the Parliament of Bermuda's top-heavy, case studies on waste and excess).

Made with a special mandate to recommend ways we can "streamline government processes, including quangos, improve services and make government more efficient, more cost effective, more transparent and more user-friendly", which seems to have been filed and the OBA totally forgot SAGE's final report.

Instead the government continues to spoil the white elephant in the room. And, frankly, we can no longer pay peanuts....