A man legally rides his bike in a Providence street and when he argues the point with a police officer, six units respond. Yet, day after day, prostitutes, drug dealers and pimps operate in plain sight on Elmwood Avenue, ruining my neighborhood, but no officer will ever respond to this crisis.

Firefighter Paul Doughty spends three years on city payroll working full-time for the union rather than on his special-hazards truck. Surprised we have the highest firefighting costs in the United States?

Every day, we motorists witness the spectacle of six to eight men and three to four trucks filling single potholes, when three men and two trucks are all that is required.

We spend over $11,000 per student per year on public education that all agree is a failure. Yet charter schools, a potential solution, are decried by the unions as worse in theory than the mess we have now in reality. The dirty secret being: If the charter schools succeed, the teachers unions will not. And so the General Assembly blocks any movement forward.

We now learn that state legislators, whom we had hitherto believed to be the voice of the people, are so riddled with special-interest conflicts that the feeble desires of private-sector citizens are met with accusations of bigotry and selfishness. With at least six important assemblymen being paid over $100,000 a year by unions to — well, to do what, indeed? Represent us? How can anyone believe in “the voice of the people” ever again?

In fact, state legislators are the voice of the unions and special interests. While we private citizens were busy working and leading our lives, they were busy unionizing and organizing. And, as we now see, they have succeeded spectacularly.

I haven’t anything against unions per se, but where are the checks and balances on public-sector unions? With their control of the political process, they have enormous power to tax and spend as they wish, to set work rules and productivity as they wish, to vote for their own benefits and pay packages, and we residents haven’t the ability to shop elsewhere and thus deny them our tax revenue.

They face no consequences for their actions. As proof: Already, some legislators have called for broad-based tax increases in contrast to the governor’s call for no new taxes in the face of a rapidly declining economy and one of the highest tax burdens in the United States. The vast majority of taxpaying Rhode Islanders is working in the private sector and has no desire to send more of its hard-earned money into this corrupt and unrepresentative system.

But who represents us?

RYAN CURRAN

Providence