Houblog

The Chronicle reports on the peculiar memo requesting authorization for bonuses, and Carol Alvarado’s memory lapse.

A memo dated last April from a city employee who has been fired for receiving unauthorized bonuses asked then-Mayor Pro Tem Carol Alvarado to approve $5,500 in extra pay.

A spokesman said Tuesday that Alvarado doesn’t remember such a memo. She has said she didn’t approve any of the monthly bonuses that totaled $143,000 over about a year for four employees in the Office of Mayor Pro Tem.

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If Hernandez did send the memo, it could support — at least in this instance — her contention that bonuses were properly documented, though the four employees eventually collected far more than the amount requested in the memo.

Conversely, it could fit with the conclusion of police investigators that pro tem employees enriched themselves through misconduct that included fabricating documents.

I really don’t get why the memo doesn’t match the bonuses, but let’s follow the logic out: If the bonus memo was supposed to be legitimate, then the bonuses granted should have matched. (Caveat: the next bonus granted didn’t match, but it was only two weeks later. –Edit: Uh no, it was six. – Since that’s the length of the pay period, any approval by Alvarado, even if immediate, could have been caught “between cycles” and the bonuses paid four weeks later; add F&A/Payroll processing time, and maybe six weeks would be right.)

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I don’t follow investor newsrags very closely, having no money to invest, but BlogHouston has the scoop on one of the two major bond rating agencies revising the City of Houston’s credit outlook downwards. Unsurprisingly, Mayor White took advantage of this to announce that he never met a tax hike he didn’t like. Oops, I mean criticise Proposition 2.

I’m of two minds on the whole mess. In general, though I’ve opposed it in the past, I think the revenue cap is probably not a bad idea, since it protects the average citizen from the effects of the pension mess. (I’m still leery of joining in to the contributory plan, but I’m fairly sure if I don’t, I’ll get totally screwed as a “free rider.” As if.) However, the mayor’s got a point–Proposition 2 is far too restrictive because we can’t adjust for things like Katrina/Rita. We’re not getting all that money back from the feds, people. And if there’s one thing that should be evident from recent history, it’s that simplistic referrendums tend to backfire. Goverment is a hugely complicated beast; that’s why we elect people to handle it for us.

As for the downgrade, BlogHouston has a long quote at the link above, but simplified, it comes down to this: the city doesn’t actually pay for capital improvements from tax revenue. (Few governments do.) Instead, it sells bonds (borrows money) to pay for the improvements, then pays off the debt over a term, usualy 10-20 years. The rate of interest paid on these bonds depends partly on the market, and partly on their rating. And the rating is determined by two (Edit: 3) major agencies; it is essentially their estimation whether anyone who buys a bond (i.e.: loans money to the city) will get their investment back.

Now this paragraph is strictly from memory, not research, so don’t take it as the 100% accurate gospel. IIRC, Fitch is the more conservative of the two, Moody’s is better known, and slightly more lenient towards stressed finances. They each have rating systems based on the alphabet, roughly (worst to best) D, C, B, A, AA, AAA, AAAA. They’re not exactly the same; I think Moody’s runs C-AAAA, and Fitch is D-AAA (really shaky on that, maybe a reader knows and can contribute?) and there’s + and - modifiers. But it’s not as simple as saying “the city has a rating of ‘x’. The city is given a rating for each category of bond that it issues. Then there is the rating outlook, which is a general prediction on whether things are expected to get better or worse.

I seem to recall that the City was downgraded from AAA to AA sometime around 2002-4 by Fitch’s, but again, that’s just plucked from memory. (See Update, below). Now I see we are at AA-. But the nature of the recent change is that the Rating Outlook, which was formerly Stable has now been revised to Negative. In short, Fitch thinks things are going to get worse. Which means that it will cost more for the city to borrow money, since the only way to get people to take the risk of lending it is to offer higher returns. Why did Fitch take this action?

Primarily (and exactly as predicted) it was due to the passage of Proposition 2.

The change in Rating Outlook to Negative reflects increased uncertainty in general fund operations in light of a summary judgment by a district court judge who upheld the enforceability of one of two revenue limitations measure recently approved by voters. Fitch typically views revenue limitations negatively given that they restrict financial maneuverability. The all-encompassing nature of one of the two propositions (Proposition 2) is cause for additional concern, and Fitch considers its possible implementation as a potential challenge to the city’s credit quality, given ongoing and future spending pressures.

In short, folks, we did it to ourselves, and we were warned it would happen.

There is more to worry about though. In Houston’s case, not only are we paying for the future pension obligations through borrowed money, but we are paying the current dues by borrowing money. This is akin to contributing to your 401(k) by charging it to your credit card. Needless to say, Fitch’s is not impressed with this funding technique, especially considering that it recognizes that the changes made in 2004 only bought the city some time, but did not solve the problem.

In addition, Fitch views the city’s debt financing of a portion of the city’s annual contribution to both the municipal and police pension systems as an indication of financial stress.

That’s putting it mildly. However, not all the news is bad:

General fund operations have reported sizeable surpluses in two of the past three fiscal years, and reserves have increased as a result. Fiscal 2005 ended with net income of $34.4 million, and the unreserved fund balance of $142.7 million, or 9.3% of spending and transfers out, was up sharply from the prior year. Finance department projections for fiscal 2006 year-end anticipate an increase in operating reserves of at least $4 million. Liquidity levels also have improved markedly over the past three fiscal years; the fiscal 2005 general fund cash and investments total was $111.7 million, compared to $27.7 million in fiscal 2002.

To sum up the entire article: the economy is improving and the city’s current bank balance with it, but even that isn’t enough to outweigh the long term implications of the city’s pension headaches and revenue limits.

Update: Three agencies, not two. Forgot Standard and Poor’s. The city’s ratings by each agency as reported in the CAFR for the year ending June 30, 2003 was:

Source: FY2003 CAFR

Next year, the ratings changed to:

Source: FY2004 CAFR

Ok, I’ve looked at the latest Chronicle article. There’s a few things I could snark about, but in keeping with my earlier resolution, I’m just going to point out the highlights. There were raises in addition to the bonuses, but now we know the amounts of their base pay before and after the raises. And I have to say, the raises might have been merited, if not to the extent that they were given. The pay of Christopher Mays caught my eye: He is an Administrative Specialist, (i.e., mid-rank paper pusher with no supervisory duties, but important responsibilities nonetheless). This is about the rank I’d expect to find in an office that supports council members and their staff.

The problem is, before the raises he was three pay grades higher than me, but making $3k less. That’s….screwed up, even for the city. HR should never have allowed that to happen. Believe me, I’m not overpaid; my raise when I got bumped up a pay grade was less than 3%. His $26k salary was woefully inadequate, but I know what caused it: HR penalizes employees who jump too many pay grades at once. His prior job was in Public Works, I believe as a pay grade 13 or 14 (seven or six grades lower than he is now), but he had the connections to make the jump to the pro tem’s office. Only HR won’t allow anyone to recieve a huge % pay increase, even if they jump several pay grades. They give only a “small” increase. Although I don’t know his actual pay amount prior to the jump, I’d peg it in the area of $24k. So it was about a 20% pay increase. This seems large, but it may not have put him in the bottom end of the pay grade, i.e. his pay was so low it could have been less than the minimum for his position.

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I’ve been tinkering with this column for some time now, but Sunday’s article over at Houston Strategies prompted me to pull it off the back burner and get it ready. Tony appears to be someone who gets it.

I’ve never understood why it’s bad for a company (i.e. “capital”) to abuse monopoly power to increase profits but good for labor to do the same thing.

Neither have I. But here’s where I went “OMG, he really gets it!”

As mayor, Goldsmith championed two ideas, privatization and competition. Privatization alone didn’t work, Goldsmith wrote, because private monopolies weren’t that much more efficient than public ones. So simply turning the water department over to a private company wouldn’t accomplish much. But if you could carve up the city into zones and let a number of providers (including city workers themselves) compete to haul garbage, tow abandoned cars, fix potholes and so on, wonderful and surprising things happened, Goldsmith found. Services improved, work processes were streamlined, productivity soared and costs declined dramatically.

Amazingly, city workers often turned out to be the high-quality, low-cost providers, once they were allowed to compete. “The problem,â€? Goldsmith wrote in his book, “is that [municipal employees] have been trapped in a system that punishes initiative, ignores efficiency and rewards big spenders.â€? A system … well, like San Diego city government.

Or Houston’s.

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Follow this link to information on where and when you can vote, if you’re in Harris County. If you’re not from Harris, KTRH has links to the other counties, as well as information on who’s running for what.

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No, I haven’t overlooked this little story due to Bonusgate.

Emanuel is an inspector for Houston Police Department’s Neighborhood Protection.

“His supervisors have told me they’re conducting an inquiry,” said Lt. Robert Manzo, HPD.

11 News discovered the city is not collecting hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars from employees who make personal calls on their city cell phones.

It’s just that there’s really not much to add. Ten years ago, if/when I made long distance calls on a city phone, I would receive a report a few months later. It was my responsibiltiy to mark off any calls that were personal business and attach a check to reimburse the City of Houston. Although city policy was and remains that you don’t make personal calls from city phones, sometimes there really isn’t any choice; you’re disputing a credit card bill and the company can only be contacted during regular business hours, or you’ve got to talk to an insurance company, but it’s not toll free, etc. Managers understand that life stubbornly refuses to be lived between the lines, and as long as our work got done and we reimbursed the city, everything was ok.

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Note: This article has been updated multiple times, because I made a total hash out of posting it early. This is now the finalized version. Apologies to all both my readers.

Recently, the SEIU ran a highly touted (by them, anyway) nationwide contest, soliciting great new ideas to work towards. They even set up a website for it.

Since Sliced Bread seeks ideas that are original and creative, have the best chance of practical success and would most effectively:

• Grow the economy
• Create good-paying jobs that allow people to raise a family, afford health insurance, pay for their children’s college education, get additional training and save for retirement
• Encourage existing companies to expand and entrepreneurs to start new ones.

Finally, keep in mind who should benefit from the ideas — whom this contest is about.

Since Sliced Bread is also changing the way Washington works. It’s an unprecedented effort to give ordinary Americans — people who are rarely asked for ideas on how to fix the economy — the chance to offer theirs. We’re serious about wanting to change the way policy ideas emerge.

Since Sliced Bread is so serious about finding and rewarding good ideas that a panel of respected thinkers and community leaders will choose 21 finalists and public voting will determine the top three ideas.

Update: all of them are now up, with comments.

The SEIU solicited the ideas late last year, spent a month parsing 22,000 of t them down to the 21 “best” to be voted on during Round One, and posted them on the 9th of this month. The response was overwhelming — overwhelmingly negative, that is. Over three hundred comments proceeded to rip, shred, tear, and even fold, spindle, and mutilate the selections. The SEIU was stunned, and Andy Stern, SEIU bigwig wrote:

I confess — I’m a bit surprised at the hostility meeting the 21 ideas announced yesterday morning. Let’s take a minute to appreciate the work of the 21 people who are finalists - they are amazing ideas that deserve discussion and consideration. Please take time to cast your vote - and encourage other people to vote, too.

In a contest like this, you have to make some hard choices. Every single idea was reviewed at least twice - even the thousands of ideas submitted in the final hours of the contest. Not everyone can be a winner in a contest like this. There are so many good ideas, we’d like to figure out how to recognize and encourage more of them. I’ve asked the folks at SinceSlicedBread.com to put together an online chat to get your feedback about how to recognize some of the innovative ideas that did not make it to the final round. Stay tuned for details….

And the response to that hasn’t exactly been positive either. Comments below the fold:

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A few days ago, I mentioned that I’ve been working on a post about city of Houston employees, and how we differ from the general work force. It’s been through several reworkings, as it’s one of the more difficult I have had to write. After all, this is an analysis that will probably upset many of my co-workers, not to mention I expect most readers will disagree with part or all of it. That’s actually of less concern than is the fundamental problem with the article: I am the author. I’m part of the equation; I’m a city employee trying to diagnose from the inside. For the purpose of this article, I’m trying to step outside of who and what I am, and look at the “big picture.” I’m honest enough to know I may not have succeeded. I’ve spent time in the private sector, and all my social time is spent among non-city employees — but that still doesn’t mean my observations are the gospel–but I don’t see how anyone from the outside could even begin to write this article; they can barely scratch the surface. So reader beware: this may be more insightful than an article in the local newspaper (well, that’s a given!), but it doesn’t mean I’m 100% right.

First off, let me point out that in any work force of 20,000 people, there are going to be all types. There will be gung-ho employees, average workers, people who are pure poison, outstanding employees, and people just punching the clock for a paycheck. You may have heard of the concept of “the five percenter.” That’s the people at the very top and bottom of the quality scale; they are the rudders and anchors of the business ship; when anchors run rampant and aren’t jettisoned, the whole ship gets dragged down. When the rudders don’t do their job, the ship becomes directionless, and less gets accomplished. The vast majority (90%+) of the people in any organization are average workers, or just punching the clock. The city is not really any different from a private business in that regard. The problem comes in with the forces that act to motivate and reward all three groups.
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Well, here is my 10 Worst Americans in History, in no particular order. To make this list, I used 3 criteria.

1. The person must have been personally influential and powerful, not merely notorious. Thus the various Mansons, Oswalds, and Jim Jones’ of history are disqualified.

2. His/her actions should have had a decisive and long-term effect on the nation, not merely be the reflection or embodiment of the times. Thus the Jane Fondas and John Kerrys are eliminated.

3. In the absence of item #2, a certain level of evil or wrongness qualifies, but it has to have a reach beyond the merely personal.

Without further ado, the list:
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I can’t help but read the comments formerly posted to the unofficial blog of the NY transit strike, and see a theme that appears here in Houston also. It’s the same old equation: Public sector union greed + public indifference = collision. No one wins.

Thanks to Dartblog, the comments have been saved, even though the original blog tried to sanitize them. As I read through the first dozen or so comments, all of them fell into the expected molds:

Public: “You’re greedy bastards! And don’t you realize that Public Servant = Public Slave? Now get back to work; you’re making things inconvenient for me!”
Workers: “You just don’t understand what we go through! Waaaaahhhhh!”

Or in their own words:

“when you self righteous people have to go to your jobs and endure people spitting at you,assaulting you, cursing at you and simply hating you for having enough sense to take the test to get our jobs than you have aright to your misguided opinions.oh yeah how about when you go to work, is there anybody taking a piss a few feet from you or maybe some pervert playing with himself. how about your bosses do they write you up for wearing scarves in the winter time or maybe take you off the job because your top button on your shirt is not buttoned? you opinion filled people have no idea what we go through on a daily basis. at least firemen,teachers, cops and even sanitation are respected for what they do.”

and on the flip side, three quotes.

“I think you all probably deserve the raise but this is no way to get it! When you pledge to be a public servant you do so above your own personal needs.

Who are you to take well-paying jobs (for your education levels) serving millions of people and then hold us hostage by striking?

Which part of PUBLIC SERVANT did you not understand?

These serve to counterpoint–and prove– the single best of the early comments (sorry, but I’m not reading all 722 to pull out the gems!):

A question to all who condemn the strike should be: would you take this job, at their pay and conditions? If not, why not?

I think we all know the real answer is of class superiority, disparity and complete apathy towards laborers who clearly are not by any means wealthy or close to it. To condemn these people wanting a fair shake for both new and current members is a shameful day in which the next strategy of the government would presumably be to privatize it.
(Emphasis added–ubu)

Now take that question, and apply it to the wages I posted for jobs in the City of Houston yesterday. Add to that, the recent moves by the SEIU to aggressively organize city workers (after years of benign neglect by the current union AFSCME) and their, er, overly enthusiastic support for Sue Lovall, successful candidate for City Council. Is Houston headed for a New York/California-style collision of the public sector with the public interest? Maybe . The elements are there or assembling themselves. Very disgruntled employees; low pay, cuts in benefits, no future, no respect. An apathetic/blind public, uncaring about the situation of the public sector employees. A powerful and determined union, albeit without the general support of the employees — so far.

I won’t cut the public any slack for it’s attitude towards public sector employees. Too many times, people equate “Public Sector” with “Public Slave.” And there is a strong attitude towards city/government employees as the products of job programs; i.e.: they couldn’t hold a real job so they got hired by the government. I know when I tried to break out several years ago, it was damn near hopeless. You could watch the interviewer reading down the resume for the first time,* and asking questions; then they would reach the part about current employement.

Boom. You could see it in their posture, and often their face, and tenor of their questions–rarely did they bother to conceal it. “What the hell did they send me a city employee for? Nobody is going to hire someone who’s been with the city that long!” Sometimes, they weren’t that restrained.

Nor is the general public much better. I’ve had people break off conversations and walk away upon finding out I’m a public sector employee. I’ve had women remark to their friends (right in front of my face!) “Oh, honey, you wouldn’t be interested in him, he works for the city–he doesn’t have any money!” I mean damn. That’s just harsh.

It’s also true, but I made that point already, yesterday.

On the flip side, I’m not going to cut the employees or the unions any slack either. The last thing this city needs is to end up like New York or California, with powerful public sector unions dictating a fiscally suicidal policy to the employer. I might be the only employee in all of Houston to hold this view, but I don’t believe in public sector unions. I supported Reagan when he fired the PATCO strikers and broke that union over 20 years ago, and my opinion hasn’t changed on that matter since, even if I am a government employee now: Government employees have got no business belonging to unions as they exist today. A public sector union should be no more than a method of streamlining feedback & communication from employees to the politicians who ultimately run the system. That job cannot be left to the managers and directors, because it provides for too much insulation and the top bureaucrats end up with all the power, because without an alternative channel, they control the flow of information from the rank and file to the politicians. (Information flow is power. Just ask CBS.)

After almost 20 years with the city, I have reached the conclusion that there’s really two areas that the mythical “average city employee” lacks, compared to a private sector counterpart. However, I’m going to save that for a related post that I’ve been tinkering with for some time now. Look for it some time after Christmas, entitled, “What’s Wrong With City Employees?”

In the meantime, you might want to tune to KTRH AM 740 at 10 am–noon today, as councilmember Michael Berry will be discussing unions, the MTA strike, and what it means to Houston. Listen here.

A lot has been made of the fact that city employees get to retire on 90% of their pay, with donations of only 4% (now 5%) of their pay. What the press never got around to reporting last year during the pension mess, was that employee pay stinks. It stinks like the stuff the Solid Waste department or Republic Waste and Overbilling Services hauls off. Well ok, maybe not like the taxpayer money the latter hauled off recently, but then it sort of had its own stink.

In a recent article about the Controller’s audit into Republic, I mentioned in passing that we had problems hiring qualified applicants at $18k per year to haul garbage off. This probably has a lot to do with why we privatized. Wait, let’s rephrase that. It probably has a lot to do with the justification used to push the privatization. I have a hard time believing that a private company could get more and better people to do the same crappy work without paying them a whole lot more. (Which makes one wonder if what Republic was really doing was overbilling the city to pay for the higher wages it had to pay. No way to know, and I can’t even confirm what it pays employees — oddly, their website lacks a “Careers with Republic” link. . . (Heh.)

But I can show what the city pays. For a Solid Waste Driver “Salary Range - Pay Grade 6 $617 - $810 Biweekly $16,042-21,060 Annually” But hey, who cares, it’s garbage! Nobody’s going to pay a lot to have it hauled off. But don’t you just love the part where it says “WORKING CONDITIONS: There are occasional exposures to extreme levels of temperature, air pollution, noise, chemical gasses and substances and/or contagious diseases or physical trauma conditions of a short-term nature, such as broken bones or temporary loss of sight or hearing.”

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“We’ve become like the House of Commons. Whoever has the most votes wins. It hasn’t worked that way in 216 years.” — Harry Reid, House Minority (Democratic) Leader.

Yes, he actually had the nerve to say those words, though whether it was before or after he used a parliamentary trick to shut the Senate down again, I don’t know. You know how it is. Those pesky voters put people in office that they want to pass laws, but God the higher being of your choice / none of the above forbid they be allowed to do their job if they are in the majority.

The mindset of the Democrats has been exposed for all to see. Democrat != Democracy. That != is programmer for “is not equal to.” But in this case, “in opposition to” is more accurate. Anyone know what the symbol is for that one?

The mask is off; vote for a Democrat at your peril.

The Dallas county Sherrif’s department has seriously disappointed me. I had an article almost ready to post earlier about it, but the browser glitched and swallowed my post. Since then, I’ve seen Michelle Malkin’s post about how the MSM is up to it’s usual tricks. “All the news that’s fitted to print,” indeed. Only this time it’s the WSJ up to no good.

I wanted to reference that post before resuming with the story I saw in the Chronicle for a reason. Journalism, as performed in the mainstream media, is dead. As if the ghoulish maniac in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre had gotten a job as a news anchor, the current crop of so-called reporters and editors wear the skin of journalism’s heyday like an ill-fitted trophy. Amidst all the petulant whining about blogs and self-congratulation for the wonderful job they do, they have failed to notice that the reason they’re zombies is that they report like them. Not like people who care about the subjects they are reporting on. Reporting should be half-education. Instead, it’s 100% showmanship. The ratings race and the almighty dollar have helped political and personal bias in the info-tainment industry destroy what’s left of the MSM’s creditability.
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I’ve been planning an article on Baytown’s treatment of its employees who evac’d ahead of Rita for some time. Now word comes today that the City of Houston is also firing employees who left during the emergency. So are there differences between the two? And what are they?

The City of Baytown and its Public Works superintendant Mark LeBlanc have decided to show the peons what it meant to work for the Baron. “Thou shalt be at thy post at all times.” The number of firings now stands at 12 (no, wait, really, it’s only 11) most from the PW dept., but there may have been others. Channel 11 did the usual media
BS, concentrating on one person’s story in order to portray what they wanted, and thereby leaving more questions than answers. The Baytown Sun has been a little more thorough, but not a lot.

Baytown, in the person of Deputy City Manager Bob Leiper, is claiming that a clause involving mandatory overtime in the job description of every employee was sufficient notice that they were essential personnel. The problem with that is, even so, you have to tell an employee when he is expected to show up for the overtime. Did the City of Baytown? Apparently, in several cases, it did not.

It gets worse. The law is plain on this matter. Employers cannot fire employees for failing to report to work during a mandatory evacuation unless that person is essential and they provide a shelter for the employee during the storm. Frankly, it’s the last that’s going to bite the City in it’s ass; Leiper is going to have to show that Baytown had designated such a facility and that it could reasonably be expected to survive a Cat 5 storm with a 20-foot storm surge, which is what was expected at the time. I’d bet there aren’t two dozen structures in the entire metro area that could do that. (HP has one — they were enjoying catered BBQ at their shelter.) Well, the storm surge is easy, be well inland. Like more than 30 miles, because that didn’t work for parts of Cameron Parish, when Rita struck as a Cat 3. And “inland’ doesn’t exactly describe Baytown.

It defies reason to think that these people would have been fired had Rita come ashore in Galveston as a Cat 5 hurricane, but then, I’ve seen a lot of reason defying BS since Katrina dropped in to visit New Orleans. The trick is, Baytown is claiming that all city employees are essential. Total hogwash. During a hurricane and evacuation, how many people are going to:

1. Pay parking tickets.
2. Visit the library.
3. File a construction application.
4. Need their water meter read.
5. Call about a utility bill.
6…. oh you get the picture.

Citizen reaction in Baytown was entirely predictible. A few stood up to sayYawn. “Those meanies!” But mostly, a vast yawning indifference. Then people wonder why they only get served by rude, uncaring, unmotivated employees at City Hall. Somthing about binding the mouths. . . .

So isn’t the City of Houston doing the same thing? They’re firing people for not showing up. Well, yes and no. The difference in Houston’s case, it’s firing only emergency service providers. Fire, police, and dispatch personnel. Now granted, some or all of these lived in the evac areas. But in Houston’s case, all personnel are informed ahead of time if they are considered essential. So you know beforehand that if a disaster hits, you’re stuck at work. Lets take KHOU’s poster child for unfortunate events:

Tonya Locks works at HEC taking calls from people needing help but when Rita was coming, she says she needed help because she’s the sole provider for her family.

That family lives in one of those zip codes and includes a sick grandmother.

“Basically I should have abandoned my family and been at my job,” she says.

If that’s the case, then the questions become:

1. Why did the employee choose to live in such an area? (Granted, this isn’t entirely a fair question–hang on).
2. Knowing that one is an essential personnel, and living in an evac zone, why would the employee fail to make alternate arrangements with family and friends?
3. Finally, if one is stuck living in such an area, and has no one they can rely on to deal with their own family while they perform essential tasks, why the hell did they take the job anyway?

What the hell is a sole provider doing taking an essential emergency services personnel job??? I have to agree with the final poster in a thread over at the Baytown Sun’s forums, Politically Incorrect:

This reminds me of mothers protesting their children being sent to Iraq earlier in the war…they insisted the kids joined the military to get an education and never expected actual active duty and thought it was unfair they had to gok (sic) to war!

While his first paragraph is full of “that’s the way it i, so who cares, it’s their job” tripe, this paragraph is spot on. Bean counters and meter readers aren’t essential personnel, and to force them to be at their post on the specious argument that there might be some use for them in some emergency capacity that they are utterly untrained and unsuited for is just ridiculous. Yeah, lets send my diabetic co-worker out to pull folks out of floodwaters, why don’t we?

So where does that leave us? Hurricanes are a given. Flooding is a given. So, should the City of Houston prohibit its employees from living in evac zones? (Break here for gales of laughter.) Riiiiiiiight. Let’s all move to the Woodlands. As if we could afford it. Please, let me assure you, the pay scale for City employees is not all it’s cracked up to be. As I pointed out way, way back when I started this blog, a 90% pension of City pay isn’t a hell of a lot. (And I for one will have to work something like 40 years with the city to get it).

What I’m getting at here is that a helluva lot of us live in flood-prone areas because it’s cheaper to do so. So if the City demands that all of it’s employees, or even all of it’s essential employees live in areas not likely to suffer flooding during a hurricane (and hey, when a Cat 5 is bearing down on your city, flooding is not the only problem), it would hamstring itself. They can’t afford to do so — so they’re simply not going to get jobs with the City.

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a better way to go about this. The City of Houston should devote serious thought to a policy of not hiring single parents in essential non-first response positions. Police and Fire protection are serious jobs, and in a perfect world, they would all be able to take care of us, the citizens, while having someone at home to take care of their family in a regional emergency. But this world isn’t perfect and the pool of qualified people willing to wear the badge (or carry the axe, or hypodermic) is not so deep that we can afford to hamstring ourselves by extending such a restriction to them. Even if we did, what happens in case of a divorce or death of the other spouse? “Sorry, but you’re off the force because we can’t depend on you.” I don’t think so.

But for dispatchers and other essential personnel, it may very well be, and the City should consider establishing a policy of requiring the employee to attest yearly that there is a person willing and able to take responsibility for their family in such case, even to the point of requiring the other person’s signature. At the very least, that is going to make the employee understand in no uncertain terms that essential means essential.

As for Baytown, do I think its citizens should care? Hell yes! Outraged is more like it. Especially the way it has been handled, with employees not knowing in advance if they were considered essential. Think about it. . . would you sign on with an employer who treated their employees in that manner? And would you be particularly motivated to put out 100% effort (or even 80% and coast on the rest).

Then why would anyone else?

I’m home. I had some pithy things to say, but as usual, I've forgotten them before getting a chance to post. I do my best thinking while driving, but it's hell trying to type o­n a keyboard at 75mph. Also a bit unsafe.
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