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Baltimore’s elected leaders don’t deserve a pay raise | READER COMMENTARY

For The Baltimore Sun
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Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott holds a press conference on COVID-19 numbers and to announce the purchase of rapid COVID-19 tests kits for schools and city residents at the drive-up or walk-up COVID-19 testing site at 3500 West Northern Parkway. January 5, 2022. (Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun).

Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott holds a press conference on COVID-19 numbers and to announce the purchase of rapid COVID-19 tests kits for schools and city residents at the drive-up or walk-up COVID-19 testing site at 3500 West Northern Parkway. January 5, 2022. (Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun). (Kim Hairston/The Baltimore Sun )

I just read that Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and other officials are to get a pay raise (”Baltimore’s mayor and other city elected officials receive a 2.5% pay raise, while city police wait,” Jan. 6). These raises should be for members of the police and fire department who well deserve any pay raise.

These are people at the top who bear the total responsibility to look after Baltimore and its citizens. They are also the people who keep telling everyone in Baltimore to do the right thing when it comes to fighting the city’s ills that have festered since 2015 when violent crime started to rise. The raises should be contingent on these same people doing something more than lip service to turn this wave of criminal activity around enough to start getting some kind of control over the situation.

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So why don’t these same people invest in the city they alone are responsible for managing and have done a subpar job of it? They should turn down the raises or donate the money to a verified charity, not one they start up for their own benefit.

What Baltimore needs now more than ever before is leadership that really cares and has the ability and experience to turn Baltimore in the right direction. We need much better people than the people in those positions today, obviously. My challenge to City Hall: Refuse the raises or donate the money until you all do a better job and earn them.

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Jeff Rew, Columbia

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