Presidential Chief of Staff designate, Rahm Emanuel recently responded to comments about the new president coming in during tough economic times. He said that difficult times present opportunities for change we might not get otherwise. Is that making lemonade out of lemons? It’s a great suggestion public officials should consider at every level of government.
Now is a good time to rethink how we commit to spend public funds. Tight budgets force us to slash our workforce. As we adjust to the loss of public employees, the prudent thing would be to evaluate the work being done by all our public employees. If we look at both productivity and processes we can determine whether we can permanently adjust to a smaller government.
Salaries with benefits for employees is very large component in the growth of government. Even if we have a “no growth” stable workforce, the cost of government goes up based upon the ‘cost of living’ index plus whatever extra is built into negotiated labor contracts. If the number of workers goes up, the cost increases compound. Our goal should be to keep the actual number of employees low and make sure we can afford down-the-line impacts of labor contracts we approve today. If revenue growth is not keeping pace with the cost of indexed commitments, we are falling further behind.
Hiring new public employees should only happen when we are absolutely sure there is adequate sustainable revenue to pay for them. Hiring and laying off employees is poor usage of public resources and unfair to employees and their families.
How often have you been to any government office where you could see employees in their work environment and you wondered what work they were hired to do? Sometimes you see staff just wandering around. I don’t want to characterize all government workers as slackers, but we have set low productivity expectations for many of them so it takes more of them to get a job done.
Competitive wages and benefits should produce high quality productivity. There have been occasions where private sector contractors were allowed to bid on government work and government managers had to bid to keep the work. If government managers operated like a business and were forced to produce a competitive product, we might get more efficient government for our tax dollar.
Elected officials are responsible for fairly managing the resources of government, balancing the needs of the taxpayers with the needs of public employees. If either one gets out of whack, the operation breaks down.
If all we do during this down-turn is wait for the economy to turn and get back to business as usual without adopting any meaningful change we will have lost a great opportunity. Let’s see what happens with our local favorites and decide whether they should stay or go.
No Loss for Words 
PROgressive CONservative PROCON That’s Me
by Steve DanaSometimes, I am conflicted regarding the role of elected government officials.
Should government be a few “elitist smart guys” that save us from ourselves by pitching an narrow agenda that will be painful to complete, achieving goals us common folks didn’t know we should have from the start?
The partisans that call themselves “Progressives” are the worst. They are so stuck on themselves. They are the ones that think they are saving us by being elected. They are the ones that think we wouldn’t understand complex issues. They are the ones that like to use big words to demonstrate their superior intellect. They are the ones that think they are the smartest person in the room.
The partisans that call themselves “Conservatives” are not far behind.
What is a Conservative anyway? Is a person with a Pro-Life abortion stance a conservative if they also support labor unions or the ‘green’ agenda? In the two party system, it creates a real dilemma.
Do we want an elitist government from either party to tell us we have been bad and now we have to take nasty medicine to make us better? Or, do we want government to be common folks who recognize we have to adapt to changing conditions and alter our course, factoring into the process both positive and negative impacts then balancing the change against the cost?
Are we at the point where we have to adopt the extremist point of view or perish?
I am convinced that the vast majority of Americans are somewhere in the middle. We all want smart guys working on our behalf, but we don’t want them talking down to us.
The labels we put on parties confuse me to the point where I don’t know where I fit anymore. (That would suggest that I did at one time.)
The problem I see with most elected officials is that they fail to do their homework. The scope of the problem is huge so they rely on staff to do the in depth work on an issue and never develop an understanding that comes from slogging through the details. Bureaucrats and Lobbyist capitalize on this weakness the most.
The other major problem in a partisan system is the fact that party leadership has so much power. With the power to control what issues come to a vote, what language is in a bill, the trade-offs, the deals and anything else you can imagine they often don’t represent interests of constituents. Partisans have their own elitist club and most of us are not in it.
The two-party system does not offer alternatives for Pro-Choice Capitalists like me. David Brooks calls us Progressive Conservatives. Isn’t that ironic?
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