February 14, 2006

Today is Mayor Bloomberg's birthday, and we want to congratulate him publicly.  We are fortunate that he is our mayor, particularly when we compare him with his vanquished rivals.  Out of respect for his privacy, we will not disclose his age, but it happens to be the subject of a Beatles song.
 
Our opinion is that Michael Bloomberg will be regarded favorably by municipal historians.  He is the second mayor (Giuliani was the first) to be limited to two terms by the Lauder amendment, which both weakens and strengthens a mayor in his second term.  Bloomberg is, and Giuliani was, weaker because their enemies can count the days to their departure, a process now well underway with Governor Pataki.  The two-term limit also helps incumbents win a second term, since every primary rival wants the seat to be open as soon as possible, a four year wait being preferable to eight.

(This is where the edition sent out last night mysteriously stopped.  Today, we can proceed.)

The Mayor is stronger politically today because he can say or do what he likes without fear of punishment by the voters.  He has prevailed in two elections, and now he is home free.  Since Mayor Bloomberg says he has no further political ambitions (although Kevin Sheekey is said to dream of the Presidency), he has considerable leverage to act without fear.  However, although the voters cannot punish him, the legislature can, if one house or the other feels sufficiently provoked.  Another problem he will face is that commissioners tend to drift away during the waning years of a mayoralty, motivated by the desire to find longer-term employment.
 
Good as this mayor is for the city, it is nonetheless the responsibility of a blogger to find those areas where he could do better, and call them to public attention.  We have been part of or watched closely the last seven mayoral administrations (Wagner through Bloomberg) and this mayor is certainly one of the better ones.  His team varies in quality, all administrations consist of winners, mediocrities and a few losers, but this mayor appears to be fiercely loyal to everyone he ever chose. (Rule 15-D "Love me, love my dog.")  

In some areas, the administration has performed superbly; in others, it could do a better job.  Other mayors have been blocked by politics, fear and disinclination to disturb the status quo, this mayor has greater freedom to act.  Any enterprise of the enormous magnitude of the City of New York (which now spends $52 billion a year), would defy both reason and experience if it attained perfection.

To be specific and timely, the Mayor and Commissioner Doherty deserve credit today for the good job Sanitation appears to be doing with snow removal.  Efficient and purposeful, the troops have made the 1969 Queens fiasco a distant memory.  Well done.
 
Since this began as a birthday greeting, it would be somewhat insensitive to turn it into a whine.  But there are a number of issues about which one feels a certain unease.  One is the news of the poor fellow in Albany who was caught with the cards of solitaire on his computer screen.  The slacker "just stepped away from his desk", and didn't even bother to cover the incriminating evidence on his screen.  He was not even paying attention to his game, much less the work that he was supposed to be doing, if in fact there was any work for him to do..
 
On an unprecedented personal visit to the city's state legislative office in Albany, Mayor Bloomberg walked past the poor devil's work station, and seeing the screen covered by solitaire cards, is said to have ordered the offender fired on the spot.  The sinner, one Edward Greenwood IX (said to be the ninth of that name, which may be an unlucky number).  The Times tells us that Edward VII, his great-uncle, was a chief petty officer in World War II.  The King we knew as Edward VII gave his name to the Edwardian Age, which did not last much longer than his reign, 1901-10.  He is perhaps best known for his mistresses, particularly Mrs. Alice Keppel, whose favors he enjoyed for many years.  BTW, Mrs. Keppel's great grand daughter is Camilla Parker-Bowles, now Duchess of Cornwall.

Edward IX of Albany may not be that much of an employee, and he deserves punishment for his foolish acts, both playing the game when he should have been working, and using the evidence as a screen saver.  His age is 39, and his salary, we are told, is about $27,000 a year, close to entrance level. He has a 3 1/2 year old son, named, naturally, Edward X.   Considering his sins and various acts of omission by many other city employees, including men and women of higher rank, who might as well have been playing cards for all the management skills they failed to demonstrate, we would counsel mercy for Poor Edward.
 
A fine, a reasonable suspension, should cure him of his card-playing solitary vice.  St. Valentine's Day, in New York City the King's Birthday, would be a good time to show kindness, and grant the miscreant a reprieve from the terminal sentence reported to have been imposed on him.  He is no Billy Budd, and the mayor is no Captain Vere.
 
Shakespeare expressed this sentiment beautifully, oddly enough in The Merchant of Venice.

 
We know full well that the city's disciplinary processes, except in the Police Department, are exceedingly lenient, and there are many men and women who neglect their duties or do worse, with inadequate supervision while they are supposed to be at work, and minimal penalties on the rare occasions when they are caught and sanctioned.  In some agencies, it is the union that, de facto, oversees the entire process, while in others, apathy and indifference reign, and any serious action dealing with employee misconduct or nonfeasance is rare.  We have written about this situation on a number of occasions.

One article, "Do Inadequate Laws Hamper Educrats From Dealing With Cheats and Misfits", appeared on March 29, 2005.  That article may have contributed to some progress at the Department of Education, whose head, Chancellor Joel I. Klein, is quite aggressive on this issue, to the discomfiture of employee unions.

A more comprehensive article with a broader scope is "Some City Employees Take It Easy at Work and Get Away With It" (February 16, 2004).  It covers the various defenses presented when agencies seek to discipline their employees.  If you have the time, and are strong enough to hear the sad story, this article tells a great deal about what actually goes on.

Despite the prevailing union hegemony over the process, sometimes exercised through fearful arbitrators, there is another side to the story.  Not all employee discipline is fair or justified.  Sometimes it is vicious and vindictive supervisors who try to drive decent employees out of their jobs, sometimes with fabricated or distorted testimony.  Neither side can be presumed to be in the right in disputes of this nature.  Although in the majority of cases allegations will be found valid, there are abuses of the system by petty tyrants and their frightened underlings.  The present system does not provide objective review outside the agency until the victim has been roasted on a spit.
 
In an effort to be helpful in this difficult area, we offer two suggestions to the mayor and his staff:
 
1.  Appoint a city-wide dean of discipline, with the responsibility of getting the agencies to do their jobs in this area, even if means losing some false friends.  He/she should not have the criminal oversight of the Department of Investigation, but should be able to go to the core of discipline problems and, with the mayor's support, see to it that they are corrected.

The dean (or whatever he is called) should keep data from each agency on this subject.  His office should have an easily known phone number, and simple e-mail and snail mail addresses, so he can receive complaints directly from the public. When he receives these complaints, either by or about employees, he should not routinely refer them to the agencies for a response.  Rule 98- "Something Happened."  When a person complains, the facts may not be exactly as he stated, but something happened to disappoint him.  In most, but not all, cases, it is something which should not have happened.  That is a lesson from life.
 
2.  Spare the job of your servant Edward IX.  What happened in Albany is akin to the King finding a sleeping minion (we don't say guard because he wasn't guarding anything) and beheading him on the spot.  That is unworthy of a kindly monarch such as Yourself, Sire. Since this was probably not the first time Mr. G played cards with himself (Rule 16-J: "Nobody does it once"), an issue of supervision arises.

If Greenwood left the screen, doubtless to attend to more pressing business, possibly of a personal nature, he hardly feared detection by anyone, let alone Yourself.  It is the tiniest mitigation of his wrongdoing that, by playing solitaire, at least he was not distracting other employees.  This does not mean that he should keep a job which may turn out to be superfluous, redundant or unnecessary.  If his position is not needed, abolish it.  But try to find something useful for the man to do, if only to feed little Edward X. (a chronological, not a political digit).  

Another issue that deserves some scrutiny is exactly what IX was supposed to be doing when his computer was caught in flagrante delicto.  Did he have another task to perform for the agency, or was this simply down time, with Edward, not wishing to fall asleep on the job, fighting ennui and butt rot, conditions affecting bureaucrats who sit too long in the same posture.
 
Just as laws are now named for the victims of the crimes that led to their enactment, your city-wide program to strengthen employee discipline and combat apathy and sloth, and the executive order by which you might initiate it, should be known as Edward's Law.  That way every malingerer who is caught and punished will know whose misconduct it was that sparked the upgrading of standards which resulted in his discomfiture.
 
P.S. This plan would also be a sensible method to increase employee productivity, using existing resources.  It would also make taxpayers in the private sector much happier to know that public employees whose salaries they pay through various levies are held to the same standards of job performance that they are.
 
Happy Birthday, Mayor Mike.

Happy Valentine's Day to all

Don't mess up again, Edward.


#283 2.14.06 1797wds