Tell me one governor, mayor, county executive or chief dog catcher anywhere in these great, impoverished United States who is adding a layer of bureaucracy — and giving many new hires fat raises in the neighborhood of $25,000. I mean, anywhere besides here in the District of Columbia, our nation’s capital, where Mayor Vincent Gray has seen fit to pad his government with more middle managers. As my colleague Jonetta Rose Barras has asked, who needs a pair of high-paid deputy mayors when the government has just begun to balance its budget by furloughing front-line workers?
When a reporter asked one of Gray’s new hires why she had bumped up her salary to $180,000, she responded: “I like to deal in round numbers.”
With my tax dollars?
I’m not in a pure denigration mode, which leads some cynics to suggest that government bureaucrats just take up space and push paper — and pull down six-figure salaries. I respect many front-line workers who help deliver services. It’s the folks at the top I question.
As a group, agency heads and their deputies take meetings. They make proposals. They call for reports and studies. They meet to discuss the reports and studies. They pass the reports down the chain and task underlings to take action. It’s a good life and one that Vince Gray knows well since he ran the District’s human services department in the 1990s.
Former Mayor Adrian Fenty made life miserable for his top managers. He was a demanding drill sergeant. He came at them with high expectations, and he measured results. He grilled his agency heads at public CapStat sessions. “Why can’t you deliver this faster and better?” he would ask.
Fenty had myriad faults. No need to revisit the man’s social and political shortcomings. He suffered the ultimate political defeat by not getting re-elected. But he came into office knowing that the D.C. bureaucracy was constipated. Officials talked a good game, but services to residents were often lousy — from education to street cleaning. Fenty set out to make government more efficient and accountable, and in many cases he succeeded by force of will and direct intervention.
Rather than deputy mayors, Fenty had BlackBerries, which he used to jostle agency heads. He also reduced the bureaucracy.
Six weeks into office, Vince Gray finally unveiled his transition committee reports. What has his government been doing? Compare that to Fenty, who took over the public schools in his first week in office and immediately started the process to install meters in taxi cabs. He presented a 100-day plan, executed much of it and reviewed it.
Vince Gray scoffs at such things. Perhaps they were not in his transition reports.
Fenty hired top-notch people, and he ran the government as a meritocracy. Vince Gray has often hired agency heads because of their connections and his familiarity with them. Fenty’s critics tagged him with being brusque and brash, but the man got things done and made the bureaucracy perform for residents.
So far, Gray has made the government perform for his friends — and their kids.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
