Memo to next governor:\u00a0 Here are some words you may very well have to eat:\u00a0 \u201cGet rid of all political appointees\u201d and \u201celiminate all vacant positions.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 We have been hearing that from all sides.<\/p>\n
Respectfully, I suggest that you do not know what you are talking about.\u00a0 You do not know the facts on the ground.<\/p>\n
Maybe the only word you will have to eat is \u201call.\u201d<\/p>\n
About political appointees:\u00a0\u00a0 The bloat in the current administration is not as bad as the public thinks.\u00a0 It\u2019s worse. In some cases, the politicos have caused damage far beyond their own excessive salaries.\u00a0 Some of them were given positions of authority where they interfered with the ability of the rank-and-file employees around them to function and so wasted whole bureaus\u2019-worth of the taxpayers\u2019 money.<\/p>\n
But not necessarily all.<\/p>\n
Even in the current administration, with its myriad faults, there may have been one or two political hires who did really good work and could be vital contributors to the next administration, but if you keep them you will be putting yourself in a spot because you promised to get rid of them.<\/p>\n
But you won\u2019t know who they are until you study the agencies up close and in depth.\u00a0 That\u2018s what gubernatorial transitions are supposed to do.<\/p>\n
And once you are in office, you will undoubtedly find a compelling need to hire a few political appointees of your own choosing.\u00a0 So have fun explaining that to the voters!<\/p>\n
Regarding vacancies:\u00a0 It\u2019s easy to talk about shrinking government by not filling vacancies, because you don\u2019t have to fire anybody.\u00a0 It\u2019s even easier if you generalize state government as an undifferentiated sea of lackluster bureaucrats, none doing anything especially important.<\/p>\n
But what are the vacant positions, exactly?<\/p>\n
Some 20 years ago, in a small crisis that never made the news, an agency had a severe shortage of employees in a certain category.\u00a0 The agency begged the Legislative Finance Committee to allow it to increase the salary range for that classification, because no qualified applicants were applying for the jobs and there was a huge backlog of demand for the work that could not be done without the trained technical experts to do it.<\/p>\n
Undifferentiated bureaucrats?\u00a0 Not exactly.\u00a0 The agency was the state\u2019s crime lab, and the people they needed were forensic experts — the kind of people you see on TV on \u201cCSI.\u201d<\/p>\n
New Mexico\u2019s pay rate was so low that it could not compete with other states for those technicians. (This story was a firsthand account to me by a legislator who was a member of the Legislative Finance Committee.)<\/p>\n
Some positions today may be vacant because, like the forensic experts 20 years ago, they are hard to fill.\u00a0 We do not know what critically important jobs are going undone today because of vacancies and the current hiring freeze.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, it\u2019s possible to find real live employees who are not contributing enough to justify what they are paid.\u00a0 It\u2019s also possible to find people who are doing the best they can, but the job itself is not worth doing, either intrinsically or on a comparative cost-benefit basis, which is even harder to evaluate.\u00a0 In these cases the fault might not be with the employee but with the supervisor or even with the enabling legislation.<\/p>\n
If you really want a state government that is not only smaller but also better, you have to do the hard work of making complex analytic decisions — hundreds of them.<\/p>\n
Governor-to-be, if you really are determined to to this, you may not want to suggest that it will be painless.<\/p>\n
Triple Spaced Again, \u00a9 New Mexico News Services 2010; posted in 2011<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Memo to next governor:\u00a0 Here are some words you may very well have to eat:\u00a0 \u201cGet rid of all political appointees\u201d and \u201celiminate all vacant positions.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 We have been hearing that from all sides. Respectfully, I suggest that you do … Continue reading