I didn’t want to let too much time go by before commenting on the City of Chicago’s “furlough day”. On Monday city workers, except for those providing emergency services, took a mandatory unpaid furlough day, the city’s rather brainless approach to balancing its budget.
For city workers it was nearly a perfect storm. Not only did they lose pay but not much happened. If this keeps up the people of Chicago may decide that a permanent 20% cut in the city’s payroll achieved by cutting the work week for city employees to four days and cutting their pay accordingly might not be a bad thing.
The state of Utah did something similar recently, decreasing the work week for government employees to four days but still requiring a 40-hour week. Apparently it’s quite popular there. I expect this will be less so, for the employees at least.
Well, if it doesn’t reduce non-emergency government services below a level people find tolerable maybe it isn’t that brainless. Maybe there is lots of cuts that can be made without negatively impacting services. After all, government doesn’t have a profit motive. Maximizing profits implies cost minimization at the profit maximizing level of output…see where I’m going?
A good manager makes decisions; a poor manager makes blanket rules. There are some non-emergency services departments that might still be needed five days a week. Others might be able to get by with three days a week. Still others could be abolished entirely.
What really needed to happen was that 12 years ago when the city was flush the mayor should have spearheaded a program to reduce the cost of performing city services drastically. I can think of a half dozen ways that could have been done.
But the time to do it is when you’ve got the money and time to do so not when you have no other alternative.
All I hope is that when governments use furlough days, they do it in a way that avoids the taxpayers having to reimburse the staycationing employees at a later date. I recall this happening in the state of Illinois several years ago.
For an entity with a profit motive, quite right.
For government, not so sure. You see when the city is flush is the time to reward you supporters. So you create departments and positions and install people. What’s the harm, the city’s flush with cash? So the incentives are precisely backwards. Yes it is what a wise cost minimizing agent would do…but that doesn’t describe politicians. Not at all.
This is why I’m always so amused when people think there is still a pony inside government somewhere. Get just the right guy in power and, well rainbows and butterflies and fluffy bunnies.