County inmates won't be set back by 4 hours of work per day

To The Daily Sun,

Reading Belknap Co. Commissioner Taylor's letter, which appeared in The Daily Sun weekend edition, it reminded me of the duplicity of politicians.

From Michael Goodwin's column in the New Yoro Post: "You will rarely go wrong in assuming an absence of courage and decency in the political class. However low the bar is set, it will not be low enough".

As we know from past experience, commissioner Taylor is not reliable. His statement that the new corrections center would close is a canard even by Taylor standards. As I have said before, there is no evidence that a program which consisted of 50 percent work would hurt anyone's chances of being clean going forward. We know that the commissioners want "a fully funded" CORE program and that inmates doing four hours a day of work would be just horrible. Let's give it a try anyway. Could the nursing home benefit from prison labor? I think so.

Of course, there are other ways to trim the budget: we have a bloated finance and administration wing, for one thing. These commissioners will not consider privatizing payroll, for example, and that alone would save $50,000. With benefits, our county administrator is good for over $185,000 per year. That is nothing less than ridiculous.

Dick Burchell

Gilmanton Iron Works