The Battle of Bunker Hill Day
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TODAY, some 35,000 public employees working in Suffolk County will get a paid holiday courtesy of the taxpayers. Schoolchildren will have a day off even if their parents don’t, creating numerous child-care headaches. A hodgepodge of individual policies will dictate whether state employees must report to work. (Secretary of State William Galvin, for example, is calling in his staff, as are several legislators.) Meanwhile, talk-radio hosts and public employee-bashers will be celebrating their own Day of Demagoguery.
It’s time to end this antique quirk on the Suffolk County calendar - and its sister perk, Evacuation Day - and use the roughly $6 million saved for better pursuits.
Reformers achieved a tie vote on a Republican budget amendment to end the holiday in the House last week. Defenders of the holidays waved the flag, claiming that their elimination would weaken the public’s grasp on important moments in Revolutionary War history. But isn’t it a little odd to suggest that schoolchildren would get a better education by taking a day off from school?
The patriotic argument is a red herring. No one is saying that the holidays can’t be observed, or even that employees so moved can’t take the day off. But they would have to use a regular vacation day in order to do it. Somehow we don’t expect a stampede under those circumstances. Anyway, the commemorative parade and celebrations this year were properly held on Sunday, allowing for maximum public participation.
Since the 1930s, the two extra holidays have been tolerated as a small employee bonus, rather like the Thanksgiving turkey. But the taxpayers are not in a tolerant mood. State workers should enjoy Bunker Hill Day 2009, because it may well be the last.
