On Tuesday, the Pima County Board of Supervisors voted for two controversial measures. The first, to punish employees who do not want to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, and the second, to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to rent out an entire hotel to shelter quarantined illegal aliens. Republican Supervisor Steve Christy was the lone vote against the two schemes.
The supervisors, by a 4-1 vote, approved several financial penalties intended to coerce employees to get vaccinated. Unvaccinated employees could get hit with insurance bills that could cost them as much as $1,500 a year. This effort to punish the unvaccinated follows attempts by the county to bribe county employees to get vaccinated.
At its August 16 meeting, the supervisors approved paying employees to get vaccinated by adding $300 to County employees’ gross pay and giving them three extra 8-hour days off. That tactic appears to have worked, and since that vote, 4,427 employees have had their vaccination status verified by the County’s Human Resources Office, up from 2,865 in mid-August. But the progress isn’t enough for the board, which has decided to use both the carrot and the stick to coerce county employees into getting vaccinated.
Questions as to whether the time-off is a gift of public funds are being raised and an investigation has been called for by taxpayers.
Supervisors also approved a plan to spend more than $2 million to use the entire 179 rooms at the Red Roof Motel as a quarantine shelter for illegal aliens who came across the southern border. The hotel will provide housekeeping services for the County’s guests, but according to Supervisor Christy, that is only one small part of what Pima County taxpayers are paying for. “Well, it looks like we have got a $2 million problem that requires taking over a motel completely. 179 rooms at $130 a night, not only to house COVID-19 infected asylum seekers, but to give them shelter, food, and medication.”