15% Off the Top - Another Name for Decapitation

Earlier today, I listened to a really fascinating, revealing and depressing piece on NPR. It was a profile of a woman who used to work at the Federal Reserve, and it told of her trials and tribulations when the Fed was actively "regulating" Goldman Sachs a few years back.

 

Long story short...This woman was highly educated, highly professional, and highly ethical. So, needless to say, she had, as the Jerky Boys once said, problems with her fucking boss. In other words, even though she had been hired specifically to help oversee internal ethics and policies, she was chastised, punished, and ultimately fired for doing exactly that. Turns out the Fed didn't really want to regulate anyone; they just wanted to, yes, go along to get along. Though they were the ones with the authority and the duty to protect people from predatory financial institutions, the heads of the Fed didn't want to make waves, and this woman was a wave-making machine.

 

Now, these regulators weren't necessarily on the take, or even corrupt, in the purest sense of the word. No, they were just cowardly, and quickly adjusted to the institutional ethics of, essentially, doing nothing.

 

Sound familiar?

 

It got me to thinking...Let's imagine that a given institution, be it private, public or regulatory, that 5% of the people working there are actively corrupt. These are people willing to lie, cheat and steal to benefit themselves. Then let's imagine that 10% of the people there are, for whatever reason (nepotism, cronyism, poor hiring practices) are simply inept, unable to actually do their jobs. Now, let's spread this bad 15% evenly throughout the organization.

That leaves 85% as still fairly functional and honest, right? There's poison in the system, yes, but it should still function, right?

 

Well, maybe. Imagine that 15% of your diet was poison. You wouldn't last long, would you? How far would your car get on fuel that was 15% soda? Would you be satisfied if the person handling your finances said up front that they were going to steal 15% of whatever you gave them to invest?

 

Does anyone really dispute the idea that probably 15% of Port Angeles City staff members are corrupt and/or incompetent? That's staff, not City Council members. (They undoubtedly have a much higher percentage of incompetence, if not corruption.) As has been pointed out here in a recent comment (reprinted below), it could be logically argued that much of the anger and angst directed at those holding elected office is, in fact, misdirected. Put another way: It's the staff, stupid.

 

Staff hires. Staff proposes. Staff sets budgets. Staff "manages" the flow of information. Staff stonewalls. And, let's face it, bad staff prosper when there is lax oversight - and it's at that point that the electeds come into play, in theory. But the power and influence held by City Managers and County Administrators and Human Resources Directors is huge. So when those people are part of the hypothetical rotten 15%, what are we to do? When the issue is raised to elected officials who respond by shrugging their shoulders, or invoking a line separating them from direct management of staff, what are we to do?

 

Here's what one of you had to say recently:

 

Follow the money? Yes. But, most of the time, it isn't the city council members making the money. They are only part timers, putting in a few hours a month, rubber stamping what staff puts in front of them.

That isn't to say a few council people haven't found "creative" ways to use the position for their personal gain.

Think about it, though. We are directed to focus on the people who really have so little to do with the policies and decisions that have such dramatic impact on our lives. Actions and policies that cause us to sell our houses, move to new communities, find new jobs, move our children to new schools, and more.

We are directed to focus on the part timers who we pay only a few hundred bucks a month, instead of focusing on the full timers who write the staff reports, who find and "recommend" the consultants, and who define the way issues are to be considered.

 

So again, the question comes up: How can members of the public address the problems caused by rotten staff members? Can we hold those who seem to be unaccountable accountable? How? How do we police those we can't fire or recall directly? And how long can any community afford to keeping paying a 15% (or higher) surcharge for the "service" of dysfunction?