It is immensely heartening to read the stance taken by the News & Observer’s Executive Editor, John Drescher. This is a journalist doing what journalists are supposed to do. He’s writing here about the problems the N&O has had gaining access to public information under the administration of out-going Governor Mike Easley:

This isn’t just a snit between us and Easley’s people. It matters to you.

Look, you might not like us. We’re too liberal. Or we’re too conservative. We all went to Carolina. Or we loved State’s Philip Rivers and Chuck Amato.

You hate Mallard Fillmore. Or you love Mallard Fillmore. We’re pro-Israel — except to those who insist we’re pro-Palestinian.

Fine by me. You read the paper; you’re entitled to your opinion.

But remember this: We dig like nobody else. We do the dirty work that no one else can do. It’s expensive. It’s monotonous. It often leads to unpleasant confrontation. Not many journalists enjoy it.

But it makes government better. It makes North Carolina better. To dig, we need public information — information that belongs to you and me.

For people who care about open government, this is the worst administration in decades.

Jim Hunt and Jim Martin were governor for 24 years before Easley. Their staffs had plenty of fights with reporters.

But most of the time, their public information officers respected the law and the public’s right to know about their government.

Read the complete column here.

Thank you, John Drescher. I hope to see your face in the Journalism Hall of Fame in that little burg down the road from you someday. You belong there.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

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The Vermont State Employees Association, the state workers’ union, had requested from the Department of Human Resources emails and other documents relating to Gov. Douglas‘ plan to cut 400 jobs from the state’s payrolls. DHR responded with a demand for $1700 to pay for the time DHR staff would have to spend gathering the documents in order to deliver them by the deadline specified in the public records law. (See the Times Argus story here.)

Administration Secretary Michael Smith suggested that VSEA request the information under an article of the union contract, which doesn’t state any deadlines and which wouldn’t, therefore, require some DHR staff to drop everything else they’re doing to meet the deadline.

Sounds reasonable, perhaps, to the very naive. But VSEA isn’t very naive. They have countered with the suggestion that DHR request an extension of time to produce the records, which is allowed under the public records law. But VSEA is not open to abandoning their public records law request and issuing the request under the union contract, since that would deprive them of timelines entirely, as well as the possibility of suing DHR in Superior court if it fails to produce the records. In other words, the alternative proposed by the administration is one that would render them unaccountable.

VSEA makes the point that both it and legislative committees have been asking for months about the impact of the loss of the 400 jobs on state services. Given that, it’s rather disingenuous of the administration to complain about being caught short on time to produce the records such that they can’t comply with the law without charging VSEA $1700.

There are elements of this situation that closely resemble what I experienced with the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office as well, which show themselves to be standard tricks and strategies of bureaucracies doing all they can to stall, at least, and avoid accountability entirely, at most.

For instance, in order to pursue an appeal of the Secretary of State’s due-process violating procedures that deprived me of my livelihood, I first had to order a hard copy transcript of the OPR hearing in my case, which came with a $1000 price tag. The state also had an alternative for me, as well, much as they suggested one to VSEA: save the cost what we will charge you to proceed, and just accept what we say the way we say it.

My thanks to VSEA to persisting in its efforts to attain the information it’s entitled to by law, without having to pay expenses that should fall to the state. As for the matter of who should bear the expense of providing records, that’s one of the details that legislators should develop a habit of addressing in all such legislation. It is absolutely one of the details that bureaucracies use to deter people from availing themselves of all the procedures (e.g. my appeal) and information (e.g. DHR records) to which they are entitled; details that in effect constitute loopholes for the bureaucracy. It’s up to legislators to close those loopholes by clearly stating who pays for what. And it’s up to us rank and file citizens to see to it that legislators close those loopholes and define clear accountability mechanisms for bureaucracies.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

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Something Happening Here by Jim Schutze is in today’s Dallas Observer. Reasons I was favorably impressed:

• Not the meatiest reason, but a reason nonetheless, is that Schutze is a columnist for the Dallas Observer.  Dad was a columnist for the Charlotte Observer, so the positive association was there from the git-go.
• Schutze identifies himself early on as an “ultra, off-the-charts liberal.” Sounds like home.
• Schutze writes of meeting a fellow for lunch who is an “ultra, off-the-charts conservative.”  That’s a good way to be.  Having friends whose politics are very different from our own contributes to things like careful thinking, constructive dialog, give and take, recognition of common ground, and valuing good hearts no matter what their politics.  That way we’re less likely to succumb to the violent impulses readily indulged by those who fancy themselves guardians of sometime ill-conceived “purity.”
• Schutze is a superb writer. He tells a story that invites readers to think about things, and to think in ways, they probably wouldn’t have were it not for reading his piece.

Along with all that, there’s who and what he writes about.  I won’t spoil the story for you, but I will say that while I wouldn’t want to be the target of some of the less pleasant, um, explications of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, I cannot overstate my appreciation for any politician who believes that competence is more important than party lines.  It’s very heartening to read about, and too rare to encounter.

Beyond all those things, Schutze writes about matters of race and racialization with a depth that doesn’t often accompany the items I filter through having to do with bureaucracy, and most especially without the mind-numbing, anger-mongering sensationalism that usually accompanies those topics in the vast majority of American media–liberal, conservative, mainstream or not.  (Remember the recently cited WSJ story?)  Ah…no wonder, I see as I dig a little further through Google about Mr. Schutze.  He’s been writing about race and racializing for a long time, and has received more than a few awards for his writing.

So go read Schutze, here.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

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Insurance company bureaucracies are notoriously abusive. Anyone who has ever had a go ’round with an insurance company will identify. The industry motto, “Pay as little as late as possible,” serves the interests of lining pockets from the misfortunes of others. Remember the character of the insurance exec in the movie, The Incredibles? (The movie was worth it just for that, even without all the other cool stuff.) This video is born of that same type of experience with insurance companies.

Disclaimer: I do not intend to cast aspersions on the many fine people who work for insurance companies. Most of them know how true all this is, too. Nor do I mean to suggest that every insurance company acts abusively all the time. Some act the way they should, some times or even most of the time.

Here’s the video:

Check out Health Care for America Now Their grassroots model is one of the successful strategies for changing bad bureaucracies.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

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I’m looking forward to reading the book, after reading the review, as it appears to present a compelling picture of how bureaucracy blocks important, cutting edge innovation.  Check it out.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

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Here’s the letter:

This one will also go into the BureaucracyBlog Resource Library as an example of both the importance of standing up to bureaucratic abuse, and the role that publicity plays in rectifying bureaucratic abuse.

Congratulations and gratitude to Keith John Sampson!

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

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Officials from the Mississippi Development Authority paint a picture of vital Hurricane Katrina-relief projects still snared in federal bureaucracy almost three years after the storm.

But members of the MDA Disaster Recovery Division met with the Sun Herald on Thursday and they said much progress has been made in recent months.

The story goes on to report that each project must meet with the approval of up to fifteen (15) different agencies–and many of those agencies require several appointments each.

I wonder if anyone has crunched the numbers on what the cost is of all the time that goes into those multiple approval processes? And what about looking at how much duplication there is in all those processes and consolidating them across bureaucracies? How many more housing units could be built with the money saved by eliminating duplications?

Oh, I know–that’s hoping for a lot of reasoning power to be brought to bear on the situation, but I have faith in the human capacity for change. And also the wisdom to not hold my breath waiting.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

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An Arkansas State slide presentation that’s linked in the Resource Library, Public Organization and the Problem of Change, also addresses issues of bureaucracy and education, and how the wrong bureaucratic design can hurt the educational mission. It’s not that education and bureaucracy need necessarily be at odds. It’s a matter of what kind of bureaucracy serves education well, and not setting up a machine bureaucracy that’s incapable of measuring what is most important in educational endeavors.

I find it astonishing, and I fear common, that institutions of higher education often do not take time to find out, and make use of, some of the cutting edge work being done by their own students and faculty that could so well serve the kinds of administrative changes that would enhance the educational mission. It seems that C. J. Doran, a professor at the University of New Brunswick-St. John, may be just such a person. I don’t know as much, not being familiar with his work or even with the details of the situation and Action Plan, but it’s generally better to take one’s cues from the people actually doing the work and research—or at least to listen to them carefully.

Here’s to the best possible outcomes for higher education for my northern neighbors, rather than decisions guided by such factors as who has how much of what kind of power and when.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

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As I regularly refer to Franz Kafka, this item on some of his unpublished papers got my attention this morning.

Part of Kafka’s genius was in seeing, and making the picture accessible to others, the crazy-making, and sometimes downright evil (e.g. Nazi), abuses to which bureaucracies so often are given. In doing so he has also imparted a measure of sanity to those caught up in the hidden and unresponsive machinations of one bureaucracy or another, by showing them (us; me!) that no, you aren’t alone, this happens to a lot of people, and it’s been happening for a long time, because the powers-that-be enjoy their power just a little too much. And sometimes a lot too much.

Read The Trial and The Castle if you haven’t already, and be astonished by how relevant they are to interfacing with present-day bureaucracies.

Along with the others mentioned in the CBC News article, I also hope these papers soon become available to researchers, and their content to the public.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

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Take out mention of the Harvard controversy, take out the graphic, and take out or re-write most of the last four paragraphs, and what’s left would be an excellent piece of reporting.

You can read it here.

Sampson’s experience, along with the racialized aspects of the presidential campaign, presents an opportunity for the kind of difficult and honest dialogue that people undertook, oh so cautiously, during the Civil Rights Movement, but which has largely fallen by the wayside in more recent years. May we do so again. And again, I’ll hope we keep in mind what Bobby Kennedy said the night that Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated:

To make gentle the life of this world, let us dedicate ourselves to that.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

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