The Golden Gate

Okay, remember back a couple of weeks ago, when I was talking about San Francisco’s seriously messed-up Public Employee system? Well, back then I wrote that San Francisco has 1 City Employee for every 29 City residents. That’s pretty amazing in its own right. But it’s not the sheer, massive SIZE of the City workforce that’s the core problem. Nor is it a lack of money — though money is the problem that all politicians and bureaucrats love to blame.

No, it’s the archaic, byzantine rules that govern how those City employees are hired, promoted and fired that makes it so hard to do anything substantial to improve the performance of San Francisco’s public services. This is the single biggest factor that makes it so hard to adapt personnel to the various tasks, and above all, what makes it so difficult to hold people accountable for performing properly.

The latest stark example that things are out of whack comes from a report in the San Francisco Sentinel — an online local news and commentary site. The Sentinel reports that Mayor Gavin Newsom couldn’t even do something as simple as to re-hire a SINGLE PARK GARDENER, without setting off a ridiculous cascade of consequences. It turns out that this straightforward act would have cost the City more than $900,000!

Newsom recalled his learning experience with civil service regulations.

Newsom told of attending a Richmond District community meeting, with speakers adamant to save a Recreations and Parks Department gardener, and finally agreeing to keep that employee in current position.

“So I went back and told Ben (Rosenfield, city budget director) I wanted that man back in his position.

“Ben looked at me, and smiled, and asked, ‘Do you know how much that will cost?’

” ‘No, how much can it cost, $40,000 to $60,000?’ I asked.

Rosenfield retired to compute costs, the mayor continued, returning 45 minutes later.

“Ben came back, and said it would cost more than $900,000.”

Under current civil service rules, employees acquire “bumping rights,” which permit employees laid off for budgetary reasons to take another city employee’s position who holds lesser seniority — the bumped employee sometimes having acquired bumping rights, too.

In this case, bumping rights cascaded to the point that to reinstate the gardener position, “eight others” would have to be returned to previous jobs and pay levels.

“We’re not opposed to bumping. We just want to put some rationality into it,” Newsom said.

Let’s hope so. As I reported before, there is a relatively quiet effort underway to overhaul the Civil Service Rules in San Francisco — the rules that make it so hard to make improvements to the how the City performs.

To my mind, Civil Service Reform is one of the “Big Three” — the three factors which could greatly improve our day-to-day lives in San Francisco. The other two are: 1) making substantial headway on Homelessness (and, as I reported on Tuesday, we have been seeing a great deal of meaningful progress on Homelessness in the first year of Newsom’s Care Not Cash initiative) and 2) giving a voice to the citizens who can loosely be characterized as believers in “quality of life/smaller government/individual liberty” issues. Personally, I think there are many, many citizens with whom the “quality of life/less government” philosophy resonates — many more than conventional wisdom perceives. Yes, it’s certainly true the “social interventionist/large government” (so-called “progressive”) crowd and more organized and louder right now. But that can change.

Change, however, depends on good leadership and increased communications. And it will take time.

Still, with Homeless Policy Reform and Civil Service Reform efforts underway, we’re seeing some progress on TWO of the “big three.” And that’s a reason to be optimistic. The development and growth of the “Quality of Life” constitutency — which was really galvanized by the “Care Not Cash” campaign — is probably the piece that will require the most patience.

Stay tuned to the Golden Gate — we’ll keep tabs on how things are going with the “Big Three” and other issues of Liberty and Public Policy in San Francisco and worldwide. You betcha we will.