Attack on Government Employees

A number of state governors—most notably Wisconsin's and evidently all Republicans—believe that they have a mandate to cut their state budgets and are trying to do so on the backs of state workers.

Many government entities, particularly at the lower levels such as counties and municipalities, are having difficulties because they must pay very generous pensions to retired workers. In this instance I might agree that the benefits have been too generous. But more generally, the governors and so forth are unjustly scapegoating public employees, and their claims that they are very well compensated are often exaggerated at best.

There is, unfortunately, a public perception that government workers do little and are not very competent. Let me share a bit of what I know or perceive from where I stand.

I have worked (indirectly, as a contractor) for the state, in this case the State of Illinois, which is a large and populous state. Contrary to what people might think, I found that the people working in this particular state agency were typically quite competent and performed a complex job well.

On the other hand: I live in one of the suburbs of Chicago. My town is included in Cook County, which includes Chicago and is the second-largest county in the United States (presumably after Los Angeles County). I have to admit that when I have had to deal with county employees, I have sometimes found them not to be helpful. I have even found that they don't answer their phones. And I consider myself lucky not to have to deal with the bureaucracy of the City of Chicago.

Big, lumbering, inefficient and wasteful bureaucracies like the City of Chicago or Cook County may suffer from the fact that their employees often hold their jobs not by virtue of their competence but because they are a second cousin of the alderman (city councilman). On the other hand, and in the somewhat larger world, government workers are more typically competent and hard-working.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein