Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 4, 1994 TAG: 9402050015
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Yes and yes, writes an associate professor at the University of Virginia's Center for Public Service in the January issue of the center News Letter. But new Gov. George Allen, despite campaigning as an agent of change, could be off to a better start.
At both state and local levels, says Deborah Roberts, a specialist in governmental leadership and management, Virginia already has "a legacy of clean, good government" and a history of "productive tinkering" to "simplify structure, consolidate authority and practice frugality."
The commonwealth, in other words, has the benefit of continuous experience at some of the good-government principles incorporated in the reinvention concept.
On this point, the Allen administration has been no less continuous. The prime example is the governor's prompt creation of a 60-member strike force - drawn mostly from the private sector - to study state government in search of places for improvement.
The hope is that panel members will find genuine ways to cut unnecessary spending and red tape, and to redesign programs and services to meet actual customer needs - that is, needs of the people of Virginia.
But even assuming they succeed, by itself this won't be enough. That's because the best recommendations in the world are of little value if they aren't or can't be put into effect. And you're unlikely to get either the best recommendations or the best implementation if workers themselves aren't very actively involved.
One important way in which the notion of reinventing government - like the parallel private-sector themes of total quality management and continuous improvement - goes beyond traditional efficiency initiatives is in its emphasis on employee "empowerment."
This doesn't mean the patients run the asylum. It does mean, however, that if layers of middle management are to be done away with, more decision-making authority and flexibility must be spread further down the ladder.
Also, if reforms are to be implemented effectively, workers must have faith in their merit - most often, because the changes are suggested by the workers themselves, who have a better sense than anyone else of what works and what doesn't.
Here's where questions about Allen crop up.
No policy is helped, writes Roberts, "by an unmotivated workforce or, worse, passive resistance."
Yet, after years of recession-related budget cutbacks, followed by a gubernatorial campaign whose winner often denigrated the uses of government and criticized faceless "bureaucrats," why should state employees be anything but demoralized? Why, if they are not made partners in reinvention, should they be expected to do anything but resist?
Nor did it help, Roberts also observes, when Allen asked for the resignations of 450 employees exempt from civil-service protection - many of whom, it turned out, were professionals serving in nonpolitical jobs.
Roberts reserves her strongest criticism for the law under which the resignations were asked - a relic of the '80s, the handiwork of a patronage-conscious, Democrat-dominated General Assembly. For that matter, Allen wasn't governor during the budget cutbacks and pay freezes of the past four years.
Even so, Allen didn't have to be so undiscriminating in his resignation- requesting, nor so bureaucrat-bashing during the campaign. The question's still open: Do he and his Republican con-freres want to make state government work better, or is their interest just in working it over at campaign time?
by CNB