Every tax is a pay cut.  Every tax cut is a pay raise. Citizens for Limited Taxation

The Quinn Bill

Last year alone, Framingham paid out an extra $665,000 in raises to police officers who acquired degrees thru the Quinn Bill.  This will be an annual cost to us until they retire. The Quinn Bill or the Police Career Incentive Pay Program (now 35 years old) offers pay raises to police officers if they complete academic degrees.  There is no stipulation as to what degrees they can get to get these pay raises.  Police officers have been signing up with any school that offers any degree in anything.  These include schools fighting for tuition money and schools that are clawing their way to the bottom of academic quality. Framingham made a choice to accept the Quinn Bill for their police force. We can and should un-accept it. It's money spent without any assurance that any better value will be provided.  In effect, it has turned the police business into a cash cow without any value added.  Can you show me any tangible or quantifiable differences in the quality of our police force for our $665,000 annual cost?  Three colleges in Massachusetts account for 80% of the Quinn Bill degrees.  These are diploma mills that offer easy courses with negligible content and give generous credit for life experience.  In essence, a police officer gets substantial credit for being a police officer! We hold our high school students to higher standards thru the MCAS than our police officers thru the Quinn Bill. Here's an example of a Framingham police officer on construction detail after he gets his degree.

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