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Reality time for local officials — Part 2 It's time for all of us to brace ourselves for some hard facts. When you tell employees layoffs are inevitable, there is no joy for anybody. The Peachtree City Council found that out last week after announcing the city would delete 23 jobs from the Public Works Department. Affected employees, their family members and aggrieved friends packed City Hall to urge the council to find another way. That’s a polite way of saying outrage was in free flow, and logical thinking — not to mention some political courage — was in short supply. The besieged council took a craven note from the Fayette County Board of Education’s playbook and announced no fewer than two surveys would be taken to determine the next course of action. Among no other group of employed Americans is the sense of job entitlement more profound than among government workers (with the possible exception of the United Auto Workers). For some reason, some who draw public paychecks seem to think that they are entitled to be exempted from the economic collapse that is ravaging most other non-public employees. Here's the hard truth: Public employees are NOT exempt from the same level of layoffs and reductions in force being suffered by millions of other Americans. And I tell you as forcefully as this printed and electronic page can convey that publicly-paid workers SHOULD be just as vulnerable as the rest of us. It’s a matter of simple justice. Of course, there’s fat to be cut in almost every local government. But the fat mostly involves non-essential programs, which means people. Liberals and conservatives like to talk about cutting programs. What they don’t like to admit is that government programs ALWAYS mean government workers. If you cut or privatize government programs, you by definition must cut people. And those cut people bleed, and cry, and wonder why somebody else less deserving didn’t get cut instead. It should be stated here that government cuts should almost never be about WHO deserves to be cut, but about WHAT is essential and what is nonessential. Not “who,” but “what.” While individuals hold those positions, the leader’s decision must always be about what positions are essential to the public, and what positions are less essential. It is a fundamental mistake for government workers and their families to believe that public employment is a basic right that cannot and should not be taken away. Only when positions are viewed through the lens of essential versus nonessential is there justification to put workers on the public payroll. Local government must never pay people to work just because those people need the work. There must be a fundamental need for the paid position. Local government should never be a jobs program that exists just to provide pay and lucrative benefits for folks who otherwise would have to find jobs in the private sector. If local government leaders would assess every requested new position in that light, we would have lower taxes, fewer government workers and better government. Here in Fayette County, we have thousands of workers on the public payroll. Is everyone of those positions “essential”? Why, or why not? Where there are two employees in “essential” positions, could the public get by with just one employee? This kind of objective approach — I’m certain — is not the most popular position any local government could take. And to people who hold jobs that are deemed “less essential,” there is real pain attached to such a designation. It is, however, reality. We live in a finite world, with limits to our resources and our money. The capitalist system understands that reality and lives within it. Even government — and especially local government — must live within that reality eventually, though generally speaking, government is the least capitalist of all institutions and oftentimes operates as if the laws of economics don’t apply to it and its programs and employees. We are in a period when local and state governments are at last recognizing and coming to painful terms with the same reality that governs the rest of us in the capitalist system. The federal government is still living and operating in unreality, but its time is coming. There still ain’t no free lunch, even for Uncle Sam. By the way, it is a red herring to assert the danger of a mass exodus of local government workers to nearby greener pastures where salaries are higher, benefits better and jobs are guaranteed in perpetuity. The last I heard, this economic recession is striking all governments in this country. There are fewer and fewer local government job openings anywhere in this or any other state. However willing that workers might be to leave, there are few places for them to go. If you are fortunate enough to have a job, you better hang on to it. So, which local government jobs are essential and which are less essential? That is the overarching question that the school board, the county commission, and city governments will be forced to answer within the next nine months. It’s almost guaranteed that many now on the public payroll will not like the answers. It’s NOT a matter of the employees’ intrinsic value, their loyalty, their dedication, their seniority, their competency, their needs or their desires, most of which are exemplary and laudable. It’s simply a matter of which essential government services we can afford and which less essential services we can do without. login to post comments | Cal Beverly's blog
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