[Steve Cassani]

Ned writes "...you cannot be hired."

What compelling public interest is served by denying the opportunity of public service to persons who have had pigment introduced within their skin? Sometimes a community will cite a need to apply a 'higher standard' to persons who will be paid from tax dollars. By implication, employers in the private sector settle on an individual who is one of several to apply. They take what they get.

Citing a 'standard' for hiring an applicant who might design an intersection 'higher' than what we demand of the person fixing the brakes on a car is, I believe, a form of self-flattery. Unlike paying a mechanic to fix the brakes, tax dollars accumulate in a general fund. Tax dollars are disbursed from the fund; a taxpayer cannot, as a taxpayer, do city business with Edddie's brake shop because several friends recommend Eddie to him. This leaves a void talk of a 'higher standard' fills. Unable to direct expenditures from the general fund in the way I spend my dollars on a mechanic, we want to choose who works for the City instead. The standard says who will not be a public employee. Here, too, friends with whom we discuss such things agree - clean skin is a pre-requisite to employment from our dollars. Since all of those who apply for work to support a common good are strangers to us, the authority to impose such a requirement on job applicants has to flow from the nature of tax dollars. They are public. This entitles those who provide the dollars to say how a stranger will not look if I am to pay for his or her time.

One need only review several of the contributions to this post to discern what those who are prompted to speak to its subject have to say regarding the character of persons who display themselves. But is this a basis to claiming a compelling public need that such persons be debarred from public service? Suppose you approach a tollroad. The person manning the collection station reaches towards you. Her arm is tattooed, making you uncomfortable that you should be made to see such a thing as a condition of continuing your journey. You glance to her face. Are you looking for further confirmation of who you take her to be? Already things are unpleasant; they could be made worse. "Ah, just as I thought. And I will see it again and again. Indeed I will be subject to anger everytime I travel this road." If somone is riding with you, you cannot put down the urge to comment out loud at her expense. Rather than demand you plan to avoid the sight that provokes trouble for you, the anonymity of regulation will assure you never have to put a face on the anger to begin with. The community will be less our community but those who are admitted will take comfort that we present ourselves just so.

If such a regulation serves a public interest, I fail to discern it. It does impose a standard. But that is not the issue. It's the claim to something higher that gravels my gut. Nothing more is going on here than using the public power to regulate for the purpose of validating and so creating common cause in a belief you came to from things said to you in friendly conversation now forgotton. Thanks to the regulation, anyone who might work for the City looks to be someone you might befriend.