You see it in every new administration. A group of newcomers arrive, most knowing nothing about government or even much about the past, they see the reality of government, and they’re terribly disillusioned. That’s how I read this piece by Diane Sroka Rickert, reprinted at the Foundation for Economic Education:
I walked into the Thompson Center on my first day, not knowing what to expect. In many ways, my new workplace was like any other large organization: big building, thousands of people and plenty of broken computers.
Except this building is dilapidated, many of the employees are political hires and the computers will never be repaired, ever.
And it’s all paid for by you, Illinois taxpayers.
Read the whole thing but let’s stop right there. Let me explain what she saw. On several of the floors of the Thompson Center, nearly every available inch of floor is covered by old computers. Where did they come from, who paid for them, what are they doing there, and what will happen to them?
The answers are that
- American taxpayers paid for them. They were bought using money from specific federal grants.
- The projects for which they were used are over or the computers are no longer functioning and by law they can’t be used for anything else.
- Most of them are incapable of running today’s operating systems.
- No one knows what will happen to them. They can’t just be scrapped because they still appear on federal inventories and the state needs to retain them in case of federal audit. There’s nowhere to which to return them. They can’t be used for any purpose other than the projects for which they were originally purchased. They’ll sit there until the Thompson Center is sold at which point they’ll be moved somewhere else.
So, yes, there’s an abuse here but it’s not the one the author thinks there is. The problem is that if you write the rules with as much flexibility as she seems to think there should be it would be a license to steal.
The key problem is that good government is hard. Not enough flexibility is wasteful. Too much flexibility leads to abuse. Preserving good government requires constant vigilance and, frankly, more management acumen than we’re ever likely to see in government.
Do you know how I know that? I saw it and I asked. Then I asked someone else who corroborated what I had been told. Apparently, the author didn’t ask the right people.
There are a number of largely empty government buildings in Springfield. Why are they largely empty? Because they once had many more state employees in them than they do now. Is the reduction in the state’s payroll a victory or a defeat? It depends on how you look at it and what problem you’re trying to solve.
Fortunately I have the answer: raise taxes. Now all I have to do is come up with some story about how “its an investment in our children.”
I’m taking suggestions. Democrats especially, you are pros at this, please weigh in. However, I want to keep it on the lighter side. So, please, no explanations about how failure to raise taxes will result in the certain, sudden and agonizing death of children, the elderly or minorities.
Oh, come on, Guarneri. The reason that raising taxes, especially on businesses, is so evergreen is the opportunity it presents for granting exemptions. Pay to play is the name of the game here in Illinois.
I like how Rickert points out that “many of the employees are political hires.” How does she know? She is one.
On computers I was told once that IBM once had all of the contracts and it was believed to be political, and the computers were more expensive, but IBM always had people around the offices provided seminars, helping with training, etc. At some point, the State switched to Dells and went straight to low cost, no fringe benefits approach. They would buy them in bulk for entire offices at a time, most likely when a system was being upgraded or Windows was changing. Her talk about Apple laptops sounds like rarefied air.
More generally, state-owned businesses have always delayed and ultimately avoided maintenance; there is always a more pressing need and the Thompson Center is not the first building to get worn down and to be flipped. I’m not sure what percentage of state employees in Springfield are in leased buildings now, but Quinn did a lot of lease cancellations and moved to lower rent buildings and then repeated it more than most businesses would in light of the disruption. But the gap btw/ what the state was paying in rent versus the collapse in commercial real estate was probably significant.
I think more generally the management issue is that the State lacks resources to do all of the things it needs to do, so the political solution is to disperse funds generally and let the agencies prioritize. I’m assuming there is a way to de-commission those computers, it’s just never going to be the number one, two or three priority, particularly if it involves dual federal and state procedures.
Procurement is an issue; it almost got Edgar (Mr. Clean) in deep trouble at the end of his administration and a lot of laws were passed to avoid uncertainty about what is and what is not inadvertent.
I don’t know what it’s like in other states but in Illinois longitudinal planning is not a systemic strength.
I don’t recall seeing a single Apple computer of any stripe in the Thompson Center. The State of Illinois is very Microsoft-oriented. Anything else is practically impossible to get through governance. CMS (Central Management Services) runs all levels of computing with a rather iron hand. Its computer operations are about ten years behind the typical large corporation. No cloud anything.
Wow, I thought the feds were bad.
In the DoD we got a “tech refresh” about every 4 years. The old computers would be reutilized either in the DoD or another federal, state or local agency, or sold at auction or whatever. They are never kept around except some legacy computers needed to run legacy systems.
Increasingly the DoD is turning to cloud computer or security reasons.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Apple either. And I suspect use of an Apple Air and accompanying software package (which may be what is driving up the cost) is meant for field work.
Generally, I don’t doubt there is truth in that article, but I would caution that most long-timers have learned to avoid politicals, and they are generally the ones running the civil service system.
OK. OK. I’m sufficiently chastened. Pay for play it is.
You’ve got one party that obsessively focuses on an ever-shifting definition of government size as the sole problem in the universe and openly states it approves of less competence in public affairs. The other wants to roll out as much complexity as possible to create jobs for their professional-class constituencies.
Good and effective governance is the last thing on anybody’s mind.
Well said Ben.