If you want to find out who has cornered the market on red herrings, look no further than the opponents of SB 8 by Republican state Sen. Jay Morris.
The bill would amend the Constitution to create another exception to the kinds of employees that have civil service protections under the State Civil Service Commission. It would allow the Legislature to create these by statute, meaning the job positions involved could have their occupants more easily removed from these, among other things.
A merit-based civil service is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it promotes responsible government by attempting to place qualified individuals free of extraneous influences into government jobs as the best way to ensure quality, fair, and impartial discharge of their duties. On the other hand, it detracts from responsive government because it allows incubation of individuals who use their job protections to carry out their own agendas when these differ from those of their bosses accountable to the voting public’s preferences, if not use their insulation to perform their jobs poorly or to behave badly with almost zero chance of punishment or termination.
The greatest myth in public administration is that it is conducted in a nonpolitical way, even when presumably nonpolitical procedures and institutions are involved. Such is the case with the SCSC, whose members are gubernatorial appointees and Senate confirmed from nomination made by the state’s private college leaders. Problematically, and as true today as ever, over the decades the panel has shown more interest in protecting bureaucratic jobs than taxpayers, becoming captured by special interests representing state employees and ideologues desiring bigger government. This is most obviously expressed in the shockingly low discharge rates for cause, historically just a fraction of those in the private sector which leads to the ridiculous proposition that government employees must be far and above the most capable employees in the world.
SB 8 would allow new job classifications to be set by the Legislature at its discretion, moving some power over this from an insulated politicized panel to politicians who must answer to the people. (Of note is that a considerable chunk of state employees, almost exclusively in higher education and public safety, aren’t under the jurisdiction of the SCSC but have their own rules that also provide job protections.) Of course, this has set off the special interests with a vested interest in the current system to come up with a list of weak arguments opposing the bill.
The bill’s different versions must be reconciled this week before the Legislature adjourns. Its opponents use its language to spin incredible tales about how it would allow the Legislature to fire individuals or at the least would cause so much ambiguity as to land the change in court.
Reading the plain intended language contradicts the fear-mongering that no doubt is being trotted out now as a test run in case it passes and goes to voters: “Additional officers, positions, and employees may be added to the unclassified service in the state civil service by law and such additional officers, positions, and employees may be removed from the unclassified service only by law.”
Most fantastical of all, the SCSC’s own general counsel alleges this is part of a movement to make all future jobs not in the classified service, eventually mooting the classified service. This would require an intense amount of legislative meddling and majority after majority on a continuing basis to do something that no serious observer of state politics would suggest even a small number of legislators have displayed any kind of appetite whatsoever to accomplish.
Legislators must ignore the scare tactics and push SB 8 over the finish line. Then voters next year can decide whether the hyperventilating against it has any credibility.
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