In the last Martin County Defender Ginny Sherlock wrote concerning how county employees seem to bend the rules to the benefit a chosen few to the detriment of the rest of us. I urge you to read that issue of the Defender and to get on the e-mail list. Here is a link for your convenience;
However I believe that county employees and all government in general lack accountability for their actions for a more basic reason which is accountability. Here are my comments to Al regarding this.
Dear Al:
I always enjoy reading your “Martin County Defender”. On county affairs it is almost always right on the money. I want to thank you for doing such good work.
Ginny Sherlock is correct in her assessment of how some county bureaucrats seem to be going out of their way to help certain people to the detriment of all residents. I don’t believe that is consciously the case. Instead the county employee sees his job as trying to expedite a request, especially one that is asked from a familiar lawyer or architect or consultant. That is the way things are done among “friends”. The other and more telling factor is that when confronted with a problem all employees, private or public, just want it to go away.
The real problem is supervision. I owned my first business, a luncheonette in Queens N.Y. at eighteen years old, and more than forty years later still own a business. In all that time I have owned restaurants, bars, hotels, construction companies, dress factories and always real estate firms specializing in property management. I have stressed to all employees to bend over backwards to assist the customer or client. They are never to argue. Mine and the manager’s job if needed were to confront the offending person and set him straight. The nub of the problem is there is no “boss” in government.
You can say there is a county administrator or a department head and their responsibility is supervision and stepping in when something like Trailside is about to happen. The bottom line is that there is no bottom line. It is not their money as it is mine. They won’t lose their job for those reasons. No one is ever disciplined.Human nature is not to make waves unless there is a gain by making those waves. The proof is no one raised any flags at the county when that monstrosity of a house was being built out by Trailside.
It is the same mentality that permeates the schools where every student is a genius and every teacher is superior. Yet we continue as a nation to fall in world rankings. The students aren’t to blame nor are teachers who play the game. It is the school superintendent and school board for accepting mediocrity and claiming that it is superiority. The county commissioners do the same by praising their employees for doing their jobs as if that is an accomplishment. When was the last time they held anyone accountable for not doing their job? The commissioners have no skin in the game either.