We have all known the government was in serious financial difficulties for many years, but no one was willing to bring it to a head. Finally, Gov. Charles W. Turnbull has taken the bull by the horns and wrestled it to the ground.
The question left begging is whether or not we are willing to get serious and begin implementing solutions.
For some 30 years I worked in government attempting to bring services to our community. During the past several years I documented an employee who was most ineffective and recommended the employee's termination.
The facts were simple. This individual was employed by our government for almost 40 years. The employee could retire and receive around $35,000 per year. Instead, the employee was waiting to accrue 40 years' retirement credit, which would require 100 percent payment of base salary.
This employee was a graduate of a most prestigious graduate program, but refused to type or learn how to operate a computer. During my documentation period, I showed the employee how to do the work accomplished in one calendar year in one day.
As far as I could tell, this employee had spent a year handcopying three form letters some 13 times. These letters allowed 13 programs to function at no cost for the letters to the recipients. In other words, Government paid well over (someone else had to type, sign, and mail the final documents) $40,000 in salary and $10,000 in fringe benefits for the processing of some 13 documents – for which government received NOTHING.
This employee was not terminated, did not learn any marketable skills, and is, as far as I know, currently drawing some $50,000 salary and $12,500 fringe benefits while waiting to reach 40 years.
This example shows two problems that severely impact government:
1. We are spending some $62,500 for a nonfunctional employee.
2. We have a program that is either meaningless, or should include a documentation fee that returns the cost of preparing the documents. How many of these employees do we have? One is too many.
We must use selective termination to rid our government of freeloaders. We must move beyond the mentality that dictates government as the employer of first and last resort.
Government must be recognized as an agency to provide the infrastructure necessary for our community to function at the level we are willing to fund (pay taxes for). We can no longer hire people because they are born here, related to good old xxxx, or simply need a job and cannot/will not find one on their own.
Government must only hire qualified persons NEEDED to operate NECESSARY programs.
