Craig Ford: State employees should be a budget priority in 2017

  Imagine you went for nine years without a pay raise. Now imagine that during those nine years, your boss made you start paying more for your health insurance and retirement plan. Now imagine that your boss laid off about one out of every five of your coworkers, forcing you to do their jobs as well as your own.

  For nearly 30,000 Alabamians, that situation is not something they have to imagine; it’s the reality of their lives.

  Public employees often get a bad rap. They get called “bureaucrats” and are resented by political leaders who see their jobs as “government waste.”