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 
Mill Town or Ghost Town?
by Steve DanaHistorically small towns were established around commercial trade and service centers. Their purpose was to provide goods and services to a population nearby. They grew as the commercial activity or industry developed. In Snohomish County, many of our oldest cities sprouted at river crossings near agricultural activities. The market, mill or processing plant was in town. Around the “core employment business” were retail commercial shopkeepers and a work force for both as residences. That was a town. Without all three components, what do we have? Read the history of our county.
One important thing to remember about them was that as their industry flourished or failed, the city did the same. Today, ghost towns exist as a testament to long lost industry. We need to remember that without a business base, a town has little substance and is in jeopardy of blowing away. Even today with exploding population in small towns, a well supported business community is critical to community health. Failure to keep that concept high on the priority list will be disaster as we plan for the future.
If you listen to regional planners, they would have us believe that we can have thriving suburban cities without a base of private sector family wage employers. History doesn’t support that concept.
Public sector employers like school systems are often one of the largest employers in a community but they don’t produce sales tax or property tax revenue that pays for local government.
Sadly, many cities are drying up and blowing away because the mill (substitute your major private sector employer) has closed.
The percentage of the workers that have jobs producing a marketable product is getting smaller and smaller. Service sector and Public sector employers are increasing by percentage. Historically, a country is only as strong as its ability to produce durable goods. As we buy more and more consumer goods from foreign sources we undermine the foundation of our society.
Imagine how a community reacts when a major employer leaves town. The loss of employment plunges the town into recession. Retail businesses fold because they aren’t selling product to the former employees of the plant. Sales taxes and property tax revenues shrink and government services go away. This scenario has played out thousands of times in our country. All this because of the loss of family wage employers.
We need to make sure our leaders don’t lose sight of the importance of private sector family wage employers. Thriving businesses are the foundation of a successful community.
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