Political Roundtable/Black hole of doom Part Deux

[pineappleheadindc]

Just housekeeping announcement.

Someone soon....new thread please.

[hands11]

Do you not understand that a local government is going to be more in tune with it's citizens than the Federal government who may be located 3000 miles away?

I don't expect the "federal govt" to be in tune with citizens 3000 miles away, but I do expect their elected representatives in Congress to be in tune with them---whether they're in Wash., DC or in the home district office outside Portland, Ore.

That is kind of why they come to DC then go home. Planes make that a lot easier then before.

Anyway, like you are saying, there are local codes. States, Cities, Counties, Town.

They all have local law, codes, etc.

You can shut a gun or burn a fire in your back yard in some place and not other.

They system is set up to be self correcting. It will never look perfect in a snap shot.

[pineappleheadindc]

Ok, here's a plan:

2) Create a mechanism that makes it possible to fire Federal workers who are incompetent, while preventing them from being fired for political reasons (don't know if this is possible, unfortunately).

Zonker - space purposes, edited most of your original post - but those are pretty good plans.

But for this one, above. There is a mechanism to fire incompetent Federal workers. I know. As a Federal employee and manager, I've done it. Twice.

To be fair, the frustration, headache, and stress of the process really ruins your life. You no longer want to be a manager. Essentially, two verbal warnings (documented) with granular things to do to improve; two subsequent written warnings (120 days apart) with granular things to do to improve; a 120 day formal PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) with specific tasks to do to achieve minimum performance levels and stave off firing. After that, if you can't manage it, you're gone.

But if you're the manager, you're faced with like a year of some out-of-control employee subverting your entire unit, creating chaos, the EEOC was called in on me for discrimination against a minority (I'm a minority), the union, the lies...Jeebus, I'm frustrated just typing this.

But it *is* possible.

(I note that during both processes, as my frustration and stress were at its worst, somebody decided to make the political talking point about how government employees were useless and didn't do anything. For every 2 a.m. justification writing session I had to undertake on my own, I wanted to throw a pie in the face at every politician that demagogued civicl servants.

<sigh>

Oh, and despite what politicians hint at. The problem among public servants isn't at the clerk, specialist, manager, or worker bee level. You know where it is? It's in the burrowers. The guys who get an appointee position in an agency and after a bit, apply for an "open to all applicants" new civil service job at the GS-15 level that magically appears and then they continue to exercise their lack of expertise (too many appointees lack the expertise of career senior staff - "Brownie, etc") in policy-level positions. Making decisions based on "expertise by job title" and frustrating any semblence of cohesion at the senior career staff level.