I work for the city, and we can't even get new T-shirts this year because they say we're out of our budget," the caller said, "and they're giving these people 20 percent raises."

"I was just calling to vent some frustration," said the caller, who didn't leave a name on my voicemail. "It's a sad day."

Who can argue?

The same city that meted out 2 percent raises to its work force grunts ladled out hefty pay raises -- 13 percent to 20 percent -- to the power-suited executives at the top of the pay scale.

Richmond taxpayers can't be happy, either. A city administration that won't reduce the real estate tax rate has enough cash to lavish double-digit raises on six-figure earners?

How about the Richmond school system, which Mayor L. Douglas Wilder loves to lecture about its wastrel ways? Its employees are making do with a 3.5 percent raise. And the Richmond School Board's budget has been effectively frozen for going on three years.

Suburban officials are feeling smug and I feel like a stooge for defending the poor, landlocked and cash-strapped city.

Everyone is being asked to do more with less. But Wilder's inner circle is livin' large. Apparently, Wilder tapped a vein of oil at Ninth and Broad while rooting around for that "cesspool of corruption" he pledged to unearth.

The city administration seems tone-deaf to how it's perceived -- or maybe it's simply too arrogant to care.

Look, there's no quibble here with the huge raise for Police Chief Rodney Monroe. He should be earning more than his suburban counterparts because he has the toughest law-enforcement job in Virginia.

Richmond's reduction in crime is the one unqualified success under Wilder. Monroe has done a fine job, and his success no doubt has not gone unnoticed by other cities. Maybe he should run for mayor.

But most of these folks aren't likely objects of a bidding war. Harry E. Black -- whose fingerprints were all over the silly and costly attempt to evict the School Board from City Hall -- received a 19 percent raise.

"It really shows where the priority is," said Wade Ellegood, president of the Richmond Education Association.

Ellegood said fully funding the school budget does more than provide raises for teachers; it provides them with the tools to make students successful. The school system has soldiered on and made gains in achievement, "and it would be a whole lot easier if they would fully fund the budget."

He was initially shocked upon reading about the pay increases. "And then I got a little angry. You say we are wasting money on the school side. And then you're paying more money on the administrative side to tell people what? That the school side is wasting more money."

"It continues to be a joke," he said. "It's now the new laugh line that's going around the system."

But the sad reality is that this is the sort of patronage folks feared when we moved to this form of government.

As for city employees like my caller, they should spring for their own Hanes tops and silkscreen this message: "The suits got big pay raises and I didn't even get a lousy T-shirt."
Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.