The Business of Governing

I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.

  - Mitt Romney

 

Holyday said the senior management has helped cut costs and trim the workforce, steps that were needed to put the city on a sounder financial footing.

  - From the Toronto Star

 

Reward the elimination of others?  You can only think this way if you've never had to worry about money yourself.

This, folks, is where "government as business" becomes problematic.  See, when you own a business, you are focused on the bottom line - generating revenue, managing expenses, seeking out opportunity for growth.  Period. 

While I agree it's important to keep our governing institutions on sound financial footing, there's more to government than that.  Employees are also citizens and more to the point, citizens aren't employees.  If anything, they're the employers.  If I hire a company to, say, take out my garbage and find that it's happening less and less regularly because that company culled staff to save costs and "save me money" I would not be impressed.  I'm paying money to get my garbage taken; if that doesn't happen, why should I be paying, period?

Then there's the fact that Holyday thinks senior bureaucrats deserve to get higher salaries for cutting the income of other Torontonians.  At a time when unemployment is on the rise and EI is being gutted.  What message does this send?  What model is being encouraged?  Would a young Torontonian think twice about taking a job with the City if they figured they would be pilloried for being civil servants, have their value questioned by the Mayor and possibly end up being let go, anyway?  Are people going to move here for that and a reduction in services, to say nothing of the transit mess?

There's more to success and sustainability than just dollars.

Richard Majkot takes this a step further:

“The salaries aren’t competitive,” said Majkot, executive director of the City of Toronto Administrative, Professional Supervisory Association (COTAPSA).

“What do you want to do, hire second best? This addresses a big hole that the city has and I hope the council realizes that.”

He's not referring to the best here, but the most cutthroat; the ones who don't mind breaking other people's eggs to make omelettes.  The best aren't in it for the money.  The types of people who deliver creative solutions to problems want skin in the game, legacy.  If they feel that's going to be tainted by association with people who are going to give quotes like that to the media, that's yet another reason to think twice.

Instead of getting the best, this hyper-competitive, carrot-and-stick mentality attracts the types of personalities that have brought Goldman Sachs, ORNGE and SNC Lavalin recent notoriety.  Which brings you back to the headlines, tarnishes your brand and undermines confidence in your leadership.

Creative destruction, indeed.