NOTHING better illustrates the problem with state government generally than the shenanigans performed to give former state School Superintendent Herman Aizawa an extra year on the payroll at full pay. Aizawa case illustrates
old boy networkIf this were done at all, it should have been done by the Board of Education as a reward, even though it didn't renew his contract.
Instead it was a job done inside the bureaucracy: Aizawa quits, his interim replacement gives him a cushy job, and then the exercise is repeated to make sure it's legal. Legal, yes, but simply not right and probably not rare.
The Legislature sometimes has locked old friends onto the payroll via the budget process.
The Department of Education has found it easier to promote poorly performing but unionized principals and assistant principals into the bureaucracy with pay raises rather than to make them become teachers again. The appeals process is too formidable and drawn-out.
Promoting people to the level of their incompetence, as with good teachers turned into poor principals, fulfills one of the famous Peter Principles.
Some natural teachers aren't natural administrators, and vice versa. Yet some senior teachers who won't be good administrators may be promoted to administration just to give them a pay raise.
We need to give more incentives for the right people to remain in their right jobs -- and at the schools where they are most needed. Now they can use seniority perks to move away from these schools.
Such practices are particularly visible in the quasi-independent Department of Education, which the Legislature and governor nevertheless can rein in via labor negotiations, by budgeting and by law -- but haven't done often enough. It's in other departments, too.
Assaulting this Old Boy Network is considered dangerous politics. Union leaders won't like it. Bureaucrats won't like it. Governor Waihee once said he was told to his face by bureaucrats: "We'll be here when you are gone."
But change might be alluring to good teachers and government employees generally. Good leadership usually brings greater work satisfaction. Our present regulation-bound, muscle-bound system handicaps leadership.
Here is where Linda Lingle might do better than Ben Cayetano as governor.
She is more free of the old boy ties. She manages to express common sense in a way that gets these ideas across. She could assure government employees that all but the real malingerers will retain job security. She could assure that any future fringe benefit cuts will affect only future hires.
SHE also might be more free to publicly challenge legislators who have been weak-kneed or worse in dealing with the union leaders and those few who seem excessively beholden to the Bishop Estate because of fees derived from it.
It is a close choice between Lingle and Cayetano for governor. He has made generally good appointments. He has been brave and gutsy and tried to move in the direction of slimming down government and stimulating the economy. But he may be more hog-tied than a fresh team at the top might be.
The new team might also be told: "We'll be here when you are gone." But it could be worth a try.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.