Toddlin' Temblors

It has been such a long time since the Chicago government has changed hands -- and we have gotten so used to being constantly jack-hammered by rhetoric about how the government should runs like a business -- that sometimes people forget that government really doesn't work like a business at all.

It cannot.

For example, it is a little-remembered fact that a huge number of exempt (read: non-union) employees in government above a certain pay-grade -- and virtually all directors, commissioners, deputies and other members of middle-to-upper management -- serve "at the pleasure of the Mayor", which means that most of the upper tiers of the bureaucracy can look forward to getting wiped out every time there is a change in Administration. Chicago is no exception: it's just that the Machine has kept it so static for so long that people might forget that such upheavals are supposed to be the norm.

A lot of axes are about to fall in the Spring, which means that it is time for loyalties to be rewarded and Machine lieutenants to be embedded. Which, when you are watching revenues nose-dive and hiring and promotions are frozen (although their really not), can be accomplished (as I wrote about here) by re-re-re-re-re-organizing the bureaucracy.

Sorta like this one (City Hall press release, 09/01/10):

Daley announced that effective January 1, 2011, the City will:

* Consolidate the Departments General Services and Graphics. The move will produce efficiencies in providing security, custodial services and printed materials and several positions can be eliminated.

* Consolidate the Department of Cultural Affairs and the Mayor’s Office of Special Events, which are funded from the same source and have some common functions. Some positions can be eliminated.

* Consolidate the Departments of Community Development and Zoning and Land Use Planning to place all neighborhood development functions in one department. This builds on the efficiencies already captured by the Housing/Planning merger of 2008. In this consolidation, zoning inspectors will be moved to the Department of Buildings and some positions could be eliminated.
...

If you don't think this has been in the works for a good long time, then you don't know Chicago.

By the way, if you're wondering why the average, non-clout-protected City worker is so completely burned out and dispirited these days, its because when they read these same headlines, they know that after years of seeing competent colleagues randomly fired while clouted colleagues remains secure...seeing their workloads doubled, then re-doubled, then re-re-doubled (one does not say "No" to City Hall and live to see another paycheck)...and seeing their hours cut and then cut again...

...the future they have been hanging onto by their fingernails is once again about to be in the hands of some 20-something at KPMG flipping a coin.

And that from now on it will only get worse.

If you are a City worker, contractor, agency employee or funder with a story to tell, please EMAIL ME at driftglass00 AT yahoo DOT com. Confidentiality assured!