Making state and local government more effective requires a ‘hire’ calling
On Saturday morning, Gov. Wes Moore, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and other public officials attended a rally and job fair in West Baltimore with leaders of Maryland’s largest labor union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which is on a nationwide tour. The event’s message was that the public sector is suffering a chronic shortage of staff that ought to be addressed by, among other things, raising salaries.
That a Democratic governor would be present to encourage and support one of his party’s most reliable and important allies is hardly surprising. Of course, the governor is going to announce that state government needs to “staff the front lines,” and he’s not going to be uncomfortable doing so while standing next to leaders of a public employee union with 45,000 members in his state.
But all Democratic fist-pumping and sign-waving aside, there are important questions raised here that should be discussed outside political appearances. Among them: If state and local government is truly as understaffed as both appear to be, what are the consequences — and, most importantly — how should the problem best be addressed?
First, there’s the matter of scale. In Annapolis, state officials have estimated that there are at least 6,000 vacant positions in state government, and some peg the number as high as 10,000 which would be about 10% of the authorized workforce. Even the most ardent critics of the public sector, including those who see featherbedding behind every government activity, must concede that no enterprise can ignore such a drop in staffing.
Further, there’s no shortage of evidence that obligations entrusted to the public sector simply aren’t being met — or at least not effectively. There are police departments lacking officers, schools lacking teachers, transit systems lacking drivers, understaffed public works departments, and on and on. A lot of these agencies have been forced to pay costly overtime. Just look at Howard County with its elite public school system, where chronic student transportation problems traced to a shortage of school bus drivers recently forced the resignation of the system’s chief operating officer. Who knew that the governor’s pledge to “leave no one behind” would carry such a literal implication?
There are any number of reasons for these problems. The COVID-19 pandemic is a major one, but so are broader labor shortages and the impact of inflation as some wages have failed to keep pace. Leaders of the Maryland General Assembly long complained that Governor Moore’s predecessor, Republican Larry Hogan, was deliberately slow to fill government vacancies in order to pad the state’s surplus (and his political resume in the process). But if so, they didn’t do a particularly good job of making their case to their constituents, perhaps because admitting state government’s shortcomings wouldn’t have helped their own reelection prospects last fall. Still, some questions are raised: Where are the worst performance problems? What’s the best fix? How will state and local governments set priorities for filling vacancies? It surely doesn’t help that projected budget deficits — fueled in no small part by education reform efforts — could get in the way of any major employee pay raise.
All of which strongly suggests that this complex and worrisome topic deserves to be discussed in committee hearings and with expert testimony, and not necessarily in front of union headquarters with megaphones. That’s nothing against AFSCME or other public sector unions, it’s just that there’s a time for politics, and there’s a time for cool, considered policymaking. The second legislative session of any governor’s four-year term is the time for a lot more of the latter. Governor Moore has a gift for speechmaking yet perhaps this is the time for him to draw not from his campaign techniques but from his Johns Hopkins University Phi Beta Kappa days and devise a less political, more intellectual argument that making state and local governments more efficient and effective sometimes requires more staffing — and, yes, higher compensation to employ and retain these workers.
That process requires a better presentation of evidence to the general public. Are death certificates not being processed in a timely manner? Are there too few police to staff public events? What about street repair? Cybersecurity? The criminal justice system? Problems can’t be fixed unless they are first scrutinized and detailed. One doesn’t have to be a Republican to be skeptical about expanded government spending. The Moore administration has until the legislative session beginning on Jan. 10, 2024, to better make its most compelling argument.