Whoopsie:

Pittsburgh has laid off its traffic engineer, an essential position, and could end up spending more to have his work done by a private consultant.

"The cost doesn't necessarily have to be higher, because the consultant doesn't have to be on duty full time. But suffice to say, generally speaking people in the private sector make more than people in the public sector," said Fred Reginella, director of engineering and construction.

For the time being, the city has no one qualified to do basic tasks like changing the timing on a traffic signal.

As it turns out, the city of Pittsburgh, in a rare moment of sensibilty, didn't want to lay the guy off. Unfortunately, they did lay off a guy with more seniority so they could keep the one guy who could take care of the traffic lights. The senior guy complained, and the Civil Service Commission ordered the city to lay off the traffic engineer. So much for cost cutting.

The Post-Gazette also had an op-ed on Sunday called "America's Greedy Geezers" about how old people are going to (participate in) bankrupt(ing) us. For some reason that I don't know, it isn't on the website.