Letter: Police, firefighters earn every penny of pay

Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007 | 7 a.m.

I found the Las Vegas Sun's Feb. 18 article, "The advantage of public service," very disturbing. You give the impression that working in the public sector is one big scam. You focus on overtime as if it is a form of public extortion undertaken by cops and firefighters in the greater Las Vegas metropolitan area.

Overtime is just that, time put into a job after the normal contracted or implied working hours. It is a normal part of many industries, yet your article implies it is a form of stealing by people who by virtue of their "blue collar" status should not (God forbid) break that "magic" $100,000 mark.

Cops and firefighters are not serfs and do not deserve to be treated as such. They are very dangerous jobs and we should not resent the fact that their pay system allows for a good chunk of change at the end of the day.

The only system where all people make the same salary is called communism. In our system, some jobs pay more than others. If you don't want or cannot qualify for a cop or firefighter's job, do not complain about their pay. As a major in the U.S. Air Force, I'd like $1 million every time I fly a mission in Iraq or Afghanistan, but that is not what Uncle Sam pays. I even get complaints by the uninformed about my tax-free combat exclusion at times.

All the pay clowns came out of the woodwork when the police pay was being discussed last year as well. Look, if people want to run into burning buildings and chase bad guys, they deserve to get paid well. Those who chose a safer path should not begrudge a "good" living to those who did not. I believe every penny of the salaries you featured in your article was earned.

Yonel "Yogi" Dorelis, Las Vegas