Bull today, steer tomorrow: More painful methods of reform

For reasons best left secret, I was involuntarily removed from my inner city high school in my sophomore year. I was given three choices:

• Military school, which my mother really couldn’t have afforded,
• Jail, which had a number of drawbacks, or,
• Moving to a farm in very rural western Kentucky. It was owned by my uncle and aunt. They raised beef cattle, hogs, corn and tobacco. I picked the farm.

It was a culture shock. I went from walking past the White House to go to the movies and meet my government girl mother after work, to living where it got really dark at night and where there was no traffic or streetcar noises. Just crickets and the odd moo or grunt.

On the farm, one of the duties we had, usually in January or February, was “reforming” the cattle. In a word, transforming young bull calves into steers. And young boar hogs — I think they were called shoats — into revised or reformed pigs.

The reformation was for their own good, my uncle explained, because if a small herd had more than one bull, or boar, it resulted in fights. Where animals got hurt. I saw the logic, up to a point, but developed a healthy suspicion in the process of making-things-better via sometimes radical means.

In something as big as the government somebody — the President, a senator or a political candidate — is always proposing a reform of some sorts. It may be pay, staffing, hiring and firing, or changes in the bonus program. As in start one if you don’t have it, and stop giving people bonuses if it appears (can you say VA?) it may have gotten out of hand.

Currently, there are a dozen “reform” plans out there from the White House and Congress. The White House wants greater mobility within the SES. Some members of Congress want to make it easier to fire executives accused of (but not yet proved guilty) of wrong-doing.

Some of the reform plans have been around a long time. The one to make it easier to fire SES members appears to be gaining traction thanks to the VA hospital “scandal.” Or the GSA’s highly publicized Las Vegas blowout a few years back.

Like anything, some of the reforms would probably be a good thing. Others are proposed as punishments for something or other. In some cases, the cure might be worst than the real or perceived ailment.

The good news/bad news about government reforms is that most don’t happen.

In 2009, then OPM Director John Berry rocked the federal establishment. He proposed a bold overhaul of the civil service. It would eliminate all 15 GS pay grades. Feds would fall into three categories: Apprentice, Journeyman or Expert. They would be paid accordingly.

Berry (now U.S. ambassador to Australia) had more White House clout than any OPM chief since the Carter administration. That was the last major civil service reform, engineered by then Director Allan Campbell. That one created the SES.

The good news is that Federal News Radio broke the story. But the take-away was that after months of toil and tears, nothing happened. Like most proposed reforms, it fizzled.

For the next couple of Mondays, Federal News Radio will run a series on the SES. As in how it’s working. You can check out the first installment, which ran yesterday, by clicking here.

The point: Reform is not always a good thing for those being reformed. And most reforms never see the light of day. So be alert but don’t lose any sleep over any possible threat or change. Unless you live on a farm!

NEARLY USELESS FACTOID

By Michael O’Connell

In George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, Napoleon is the name of the pig who seizes control of the farm after the rebellion.

Source: Sparknotes

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