Our view: Grab for benefits distasteful

It is more than a little disturbing that the hottest item on the Crescent City Harbor Commission agenda this week was Chairman Jack Reese’s teeth.

Reese went to the dentist recently and was all frowns when he discovered that the harbor wasn’t helping to pay for the visit. He apparently assumed when he got himself elected to the commission last year that he’d have full health insurance coverage, instead of the medical-only benefits that commissioners have somehow survived on since 1995.

Maybe he should have looked into the benefits before deciding he wanted the job. Instead, he had the gall to propose that the harbor district, currently carrying a budget deficit of about $147,000, immediately expand coverage for the five commissioners to include dental, vision and life insurance.

Two of his fellow commissioners actually supported the proposal. Scott Feller and Ray Martell joined Reese in a 3-2 vote to direct harbor staff to figure out the logistics of sweetening their benefits, not next fiscal year but sooner.

Commissioners Ron Phillips and James Ramsey gritted their teeth and voted no. And Martell said later in the week that he was actually thinking more in terms of having the cost of any additional benefits come out of his monthly stipend.

Budget-wise, this isn’t a big-ticket item. It would cost the harbor district about $3,900 more per year. But the sense of personal entitlement to public resources displayed by some of the harbor’s leaders is enough to make a taxpayer’s jaw drop.

Commissioners, it is no one’s fault but your own if you campaigned for positions that you feel deliver inadequate compensation. So grin and bear it, take your hands out of the cookie jar and get on with the business of running the harbor district.