By Jonathan Walters

Back in the early 1990s, Florida took the bold step of eliminating its civil service system. At the time it sounded like a pretty radical move, except that the state never did anything of the sort, because there was a fairly significant catch: Florida’s civil service system would go away only after the Florida legislature approved some system to replace it, and the lawmakers evinced no interest in trying to come up with that new personnel system.

Until now. This week, Governor Jeb Bush signed legislation making all the state’s 16,000 career managers “at-will” employees. That is, they now exist outside the state’s Byzantine civil service structure. The bill also includes provisions for allowing those ever-popular pay-for-performance schemes that always kick off with such hoopla.

The bill was fashioned in the wake of a study conducted by the Florida Council of 100, a group of powerful business leaders. And of course, their view of the thing is that this is going to inject the private-sector values of hard work and accountability into the slothful and bloated ranks of government managers. “Run government like a business,” is the familiar, tiresome refrain.

Cutting to the core of the matter, the idea seems to be that if you can fire people with impunity, and reward or punish them with pay, then government staff will be whipped into shape, just like those sharp, accountable mid-level managers in all those Fortune 500 companies that have been losing market share to the rest of the world for the past 40 years.

We’ll see. Under Georgia’s sunsetted civil service system, a whole lot of people are getting fired more routinely, but where some see enhanced accountability, others see slipshod screening of new hires. And the Georgia pay-for-performance plan is widely regarded as a disaster, inasmuch as the legislature won’t ante up sufficient funds to make it meaningful.

There are some provisions of the Florida law that make a lot of sense. For example, it provides front-line workers with avenues for advancement that don’t involve going into management. That’s good; everybody can’t be the boss.

But the bold bromides that get all the press — at-will employment and pay for performance — aren’t likely to transform personnel or personnel management in Florida. Then again, we’ll probably never really know for sure.

That’s because nobody ever talks about how the impact of these sorts of personnel reforms will be measured. There’s often a good reason for that: Reformers really don’t want to know, because chances are these simplistic, politically popular and heavy handed changes aren’t going to make much difference at all in how Florida government operates in the long run. But they do achieve one important result: They allow the Florida legislature to continue ducking the hard and politically unrewarding job of actually redesigning the state’s civil service system so it works better.

Jonathan Walters is a Governing staff correspondent.

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Readers’ Responses:

ADD VALUE TO THE EQUATION

Jonathan Walters makes some important points, especially about the measurability in performance terms for what any employee does and delivers. In a short article for Florida TaxWatch a few years ago, I noted that the missing element in any improvement initiative is that value added to citizens must be in the equation.

In addition, for many years Peter Drucker has warned that government cannot be run like a business primarily because of the penalties involved in saving money in the public sector--what you save goes back into the Treasury, and your next year's budget is usually cut because "you didn't have to have the original budget after all...."

I like the concept of incentives based on value added. Why won't we do it? There is some research (we--Dr. Neil Crispo, now of the Askew School at Florida State University--have done some) on calibrating such as this.

Roger Kaufman
Professor & Director
Office for Needs Assessment & Planning
Florida State University
Tallahassee

BACK TO THE FUTURE

Jonathan Walters is right when he says the Jeb Bush administration has no interest in the impact of its changes beyond the patronage and cronyism that it will, indeed already has, generated. Walters is incorrect in stating, however, that the reforms aren't likely to transform personnel management in the state. The probable result: "back to the future" with Bush's "Service First" program as a new spoils system.

James S. Bowman
Professor
Askew School of Public Administration
Florida State University
Tallahassee

PROMISES NOT KEPT

Local government managers in Florida generally serve at-will. The constant turnover due to fickle councils and swinging public sentiment has not produced the changes in productivity and technology that are promised during each election campaign. When "cronyism" and the "good ol' boys network" is finally eliminated from the top levels of management, a true pay-for-performance system might have a chance at achieving those goals.

As one who recently "escaped" Florida government, I know the same problems exist even in the nation's most well established areas, but sometimes to a lesser degree. A better educated and more geographically stable population has somewhat more patience for results. As long as the politicians are evaluated on short-term popularity and sound bites, rather than long-term results, pay-for-performance is doomed.

If you're a manager, and you're going to be evaluated and paid in this manner, you will eventually jump to the private sector where you have a fighting chance of having your pay reflect your performance, and not face being canned every election.

Janet E. Isman
Comptroller
Gaithersburg, Maryland

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