Posted on: Wednesday, March 10, 2004

EDITORIAL
Workforce reform law needs improvement

Whenever the talk turns to government efficiency, as it has quite often recently, one of the first targets is the "bloated bureaucracy."

Get rid of deadwood, unneeded employees and outmoded civil service rules, the theory goes, and your government will be leaner, meaner and more efficient.

It's a good thought. But as a recent audit by State Auditor Marion Higa points out, the task is easier said than done.

The law, adopted after earlier workforce reduction efforts failed to achieve desired results, is supposed to offer incentives and other inducements for retirement. It was also supposed to let the state eliminate some jobs that were no longer considered critical to the government mission.

But partially because of faulty or inconsistent implementation of the law, little of the original goal has been accomplished, the auditor said. In addition, because of "gaming" of the system the law has not worked as hoped.

For instance, when senior-level positions were eliminated as extraneous, the people who held those jobs simply "bumped" lower level employees while keeping their old salaries. And in some occasions, workers would take the separation bonus and then come right back into state service as "temporary" appointments.

State officials disagreed with the audit, arguing that they are making good progress with the law. They say that perhaps slowly, but surely, it is achieving its intended goal. Further, they argued, the thrust of the law was to aid managers in restructuring government rather than simply reducing its size.

That might be so, but the law was sold as a tool to cut the size or government, not simply to reorganize it. And on that count, the auditor's report suggests the progress is slow, indeed.

To date, the report says, out of approximately 38,000 employees, only about 88 jobs have been eliminated.

The cure appears to be better systemwide monitoring of the program and tougher administration. For instance, the state must insist that those separated with incentives not be allowed to come back into their own jobs.

And if they do, on an emergency basis, they should be required to forfeit the separation bonus.

The issue of bumping is trickier, since it requires reform of well-established civil service rules. This will require delicate negotiation with the unions.

But the current situation is untenable. If it does not lead to efficient reorganization or substantial reduction of payroll, the law might as well be scrapped.