A technology manager for District schools who stuck schoolchildren with his tabs for thousands of dollars worth of lavish restaurant meals, nightclub jaunts and a visit to a strip club was charged yesterday with filing fraudulent expense reimbursement requests.
The story ran in the Metro section, below the fold. That's because municipal corruption in DC is like lake effect snow in Cleveland--the fact of it isn't news, only the magnitude. Compared to the property tax office, teachers union, and charter school board officials who stole hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, this guy is the equivalent of a small flurry.
I note this in light of the ongoing efforts of DC mayor Adrien Fenty and schools chancellor Michelle Rhee to get legislation through the City Council that would allow Rhee to fire central office employees "without cause," which in gov-speak means "if she thinks they're doing a bad job." Fenty and Rhee are getting a fair amount of pushback from the council and the civil service and teachers unions, but it looks like the plan will go through.
To be clear, even the current sclerotic civil service system can manage to fire convicted felons. Similarly, "Work hard or I'm going to fire your a--" is not, in and of itself, a comprehensive management strategy. It's equally important to identify and support high-performing--or even normal-performing--employees, to create a constructive, collaborative work environment that attracts talent.
That said, incompetence and corruption are two sides of the same coin, flowing from a generalized organizational culture of indifference--or even opposition--to things like excellence, accountability, and service to the public. That's what Fenty and Rhee are after, I think, and given the catastrophic failure of the system they're trying to change, they deserve a great deal of latitude in how they try to get there.
No comments:
Post a Comment