In today's Wall Street Journal, former Indianapolis mayor (and current NYC deputy mayor) Stephen Goldsmith argues that battles over public worker pay and work rules in places like Wisconsin, New Jersey and New York are indicative of a larger historical trend, namely the way in which the good government reforms of the early 20th century progressive movement have been turned on their heads and made into an impediment for effective and efficient government.
Goldsmith points out that the reform movement was a response to the rise of political machines like Tammany Hall in New York which turned local government into a vast patronage operation where jobs were handed out by those in power based on political connections, not competence. "A hundred years ago, progressives envisioned a highly professional public-sector work force reining in exploitative corporate interests. They saw those on the margin being victimized both by corrupt government and business interests," Goldsmith writes.
Goldsmith points out that the reform movement was a response to the rise of political machines like Tammany Hall in New York which turned local government into a vast patronage operation where jobs were handed out by those in power based on political connections, not competence. "A hundred years ago, progressives envisioned a highly professional public-sector work force reining in exploitative corporate interests. They saw those on the margin being victimized both by corrupt government and business interests," Goldsmith writes.
Something very different has evolved, however, with special interests "working in the bureaucracy, using Progressive Era rules to protect the status quo and themselves." Goldsmith offers some startling examples from New York City, where the city's 300,000 workers labor under 100 different collective bargaining agreements and state law mandates that 1,500 different government job titles must be filled through civil service requirements that often ignore an employee's actual performance or qualifications.
What Goldsmith doesn't say is that the giant state and local bureaucracies and public worker unions that arose in the 20th century have been effective at blocking previous reform efforts. In the early 1990s, for instance, Democratic and Republican politicians alike enthusiastically embraced David Osborne's call for "customer-friendly" government in his book Reinventing Government, co-authored with David Gaebler. But public unions openly scorned the notion of more efficient government as anti-worker and worked hard to block some of the the book's prescriptions, like Osborne's call for using more competition between the private sector and public bureaucracies to make government more effective and less costly.
The question now is whether an era of sharply limited resources will force state and local politicians of both parties to revisit Osborne's idea of government whose role is to serve the public, not to act as an employment agency or a stepping stone to a European-style retirement for some 20 million state and local government workers.
What Goldsmith doesn't say is that the giant state and local bureaucracies and public worker unions that arose in the 20th century have been effective at blocking previous reform efforts. In the early 1990s, for instance, Democratic and Republican politicians alike enthusiastically embraced David Osborne's call for "customer-friendly" government in his book Reinventing Government, co-authored with David Gaebler. But public unions openly scorned the notion of more efficient government as anti-worker and worked hard to block some of the the book's prescriptions, like Osborne's call for using more competition between the private sector and public bureaucracies to make government more effective and less costly.
The question now is whether an era of sharply limited resources will force state and local politicians of both parties to revisit Osborne's idea of government whose role is to serve the public, not to act as an employment agency or a stepping stone to a European-style retirement for some 20 million state and local government workers.
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