Dear Editor,

Of late there have been a number of stories surrounding our city government and it various agencies. In chronological order: There was "all the hoopla" surrounding the stealth retirements of our top two Law Dogs. While I think the money paid for public safety retirements is ridiculous, that, however, is not the fault of the recipients, it is the fault of state legislators who have been paid off by the very powerful government employees unions and the galaxy's largest pension fund, CALPERS.

The legislators are supposed to protect the people from this kind of graft. Notice I didn't specify a particular political party, although it's mostly union-owned Democrats and liberal Republicans, because they are all guilty.

The big DUH! on this issue is why City Administrator Jay Baksa and the Chieftains failed to tell the troops of the retirements and subsequent rehiring as interims. I would like a letter of reprimand each of their personnel jackets.

Since Capt. Smithee is the resident expert on ethics and integrity, perhaps he could give a quick class to the players in this annoying incident. Also, please hire from outside. It is time to put an end to favorite son cronyism.

As is always the case, when politicians are given the opportunity to spend other people's money, they almost always do. Such was the case when all but Peter Arellano and Roland Velasco voted to buy computers for several members of the council. Saving paper was not the reason. Puleeeeease Councilman Gartman. You also do not to have super computers to read spreadsheet and word document files.

The tech weenies justification for the Cray II models was totally bogus. Councilmen shouldn't be surfing the net while doing city business nor should they surf the net on a city computer. How will the city control private use of these public computers?

Now, on the criteria for justifying which councilman needs financial aid. Using the logic that certain members can't afford a computer then it follows that if their car breaks down, the people should buy them a new car and if they can no longer afford to live in Gilroy we should perhaps buy them a house. I voted for most of the offenders in this debacle. I thought they were fiscal conservatives. I should have known better.

Mark A. Zappa, Gilroy

n Dentist Opens Wide on

Red-Tape Strewn Travesty

Known as Denti-Cal

Dear Editor,

I am a Gilroy dentist who's practiced here for over 25 years. I would like to respond to the Dispatch's article on March 7 entitled, "Dentists Brush Off Program."

When I first started in Gilroy from scratch in the early '80s, I found the Denti-Cal program very useful. It worked well and "saved my bacon" during those early days of getting my practice started.

Then things suddenly changed! About 1985 we suddenly found that whenever we submitted a Denti-Cal claim for more than $100, they found a reason to not pay.

So, without being able to do any substantial work and get paid, I had to reluctantly drop the program.

Zip forward to the late '90s. I wanted to be a good citizen and do my duty for society's unfortunate, so we tried Denti-Cal again. We found three major problems. First, the reimbursement level was 20 to 40 percent of our normal fees; and with a business overhead of well over 50 percent. This meant doing Denti-Cal at a financial loss. Second, we found it very difficult to get paid at all, even at those low rates due to massive bureaucratic red-tape. And third, we found that Denti-Cal patients were not responsible enough to keep their appointments, adding insult to injury!

The final straw came when a truly deserving patient-in-pain, sporting many dental problems, was seen. We accomplished quite a lot of dental work on him and felt really good about it. But, when we submitted for reimbursement, we were turned-down NOT because Denti-Cal didn't cover the type of dental work we did, we didn't follow their rules, or we didn't have evidence he needed it; but because Denti-Cal claimed our X-rays weren't good enough, even though I felt they were excellent and clearly showed the dental problems. They not only would not pay for the X-rays, they wouldn't pay for ANY of the the work we so laboriously did!!

So, I dropped Denti-Cal for good. The above are the reasons why almost all private dentists won't take Dent-Cal. It's not because we're snooty and insensitive to the poor.

Virtually all dentists I know would love the satisfaction of serving the needy and helping the unfortunate. And many of us do it on-the-side already by treating selected needy people for free or at greatly reduced price; plus participating in "Flying Doctors"-type programs. But the Denti-Cal program has so many problems as already discussed above.

Finally, it's time the pubic realizes that the government has a double-standard when it comes to health care. When the government builds a building or bridge, it insists by law that the workers get paid top union wage; but when the government wants small health care providers such as dentists to work on needy people, it insists we get paid little, if any at all, and lose our collective shirt. We have to feed our families, too, just as any welder, carpenter or plumber!!

Robert Johnson, DDS, Gilroy, California

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