Put simply, democracy’s hierarchy for managing government no longer exists. Elected executives are largely powerless to manage public employees or redirect public resources. The people below them in the chain of responsibility, such as school principals, police chiefs, and supervisory officials, are similarly powerless. Every day, government employees across America do things that are designed to waste money and be ineffective.
Read More“The path forward is not political brinkmanship, but to remove politics and punt the solution to a nonpartisan committee, subject only to an up-or-down vote by Congress,” Philip K. Howard, author of the “Death of Common Sense,” wrote last month for The Hill. “Just as independent ‘base-closing commissions’ decide the politically-difficult choices of which military bases to close, so too an external ‘Fiscal Commission’ could present broader proposals that will have benefits as well as costs for most stakeholders.”
Read MoreLeaders from both parties for decades have kicked the can of federal deficits down the road. The Simpson-Bowles recommendations from 2010 — widely endorsed by responsible observers — were never seriously considered either by President Obama or by Republican leadership. Then huge COVID-19 subsidies came along, and the fiscal road now faces a dead end. Unless the deficits are dramatically reduced, Social Security payouts will risk cuts of around 25 percent within a decade.
Read MoreToday, in a runoff election for mayor, Chicago voters will choose either former teacher Brandon Johnson or former schools CEO Paul Vallas. What’s raising eyebrows is the funding of Johnson’s campaign: Over 90 percent has come from teachers unions and other public employee unions. Vallas has the endorsement of the police union, but his funding is more diverse, including business leaders and industrial unions. Just looking at the money, the race comes down to this: Public employees vs everyone else plus cops.
Read MoreAccountability is basically nonexistent in American government today. Performance doesn’t matter; many public managers tell me they’ve never seen a public employee dismissed for poor performance. The Minneapolis Police Department had received 2,600 complaints in the decade before the killing of George Floyd in 2020. Twelve led to discipline, of which the most severe was a 40-hour suspension.
Read MoreIn “Not Accountable,” Philip Howard shows in vivid detail how such practices have made government at all levels unmanageable, inefficient and opposed to the common good. He argues that, in fact, public unions—that is, unions whose members work for the government—are forbidden by the Constitution. The argument, he notes, would have been familiar to President Franklin Roosevelt and George Meany, the longtime president of the AFL-CIO.
Read MorePhil is a New York lawyer, author and original thinker whose new book, Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions, is making waves. We talk here about how to make government work better in the face of entrenched interest groups, especially teachers unions and other government employee unions.
Read MoreMr. Howard, a lawyer and writer, first noticed how unions stymie governance during his public service in New York as a member of a neighborhood zoning board and chairman of the Municipal Art Society. “I kept wondering why my friends who had responsible jobs in government couldn’t do what they thought was right,” he recalls. That might be speeding up a land-use review for a construction project or approving repairs on a school building.
Read MoreThe clearest case against [public unions’] flagrant distortion of American democracy is made in a new book Not Accountable by Philip K. Howard, a lawyer who has been a lonely voice for common sense governance since his brilliant book, The Death of Common Sense, in 1994. … If you are interested in your progeny not having their intellects stunted by mediocre martinets, you should read this book.
Read MoreAmendment 1 to the Illinois Constitution, approved by referendum in November, was promoted as guaranteeing basic fairness for all workers. But it does something else — by prohibiting any new laws that might impinge on worker collective bargaining, Amendment 1 disempowers future elected officials from changing how government operates.
Read MoreTwo public schools in Manhattan illustrate the high stakes of a political choice that the nation, and many states and municipalities, must reconsider. In 2019, Success Academy Harlem 2 charter school ranked 37th among New York state’s 2,413 public elementary schools, one of which, PS 30, had only about a third as many pupils as Harlem 2, spent twice as much per pupil and ranked 1,694th. PS 30 and Harlem 2 operate in the same building.
Read MoreWith more than a quarter century of pondering government delays and dysfunction, Howard was bound at some point to home in on collective bargaining. He began to see it as one of the biggest impediments to productivity and reform.
“The abuse of power by public employee unions is the main story of public failure in America,” he writes in Not Accountable.
Read MoreEvery public dollar involves a moral choice. A dollar squandered is a dollar not available to care for someone who is needy or hungry. Inefficient work rules are like burning money. It should be unacceptable that trash collection in New York and other big cities costs twice what private carters charge. The purpose of government is to serve the public—as the Constitution provides, to “promote the general Welfare.” But public unions have a different agenda.
Read MoreGovernors and mayors no longer have authority to fix broken schools, fire bad cops or manage public services responsibly. Public unions have a stranglehold over the operating machinery of government. A governor or mayor comes into office with his or her hands tied by detailed collective bargaining agreements and other operating controls. So what’s the point of democracy? To elect officials who are figureheads?
Read MoreNo society, organization, or group of people can function effectively without accountability. Accountability is essential for mutual trust. The prospect of accountability is the backdrop for a culture of shared energy and values. "A social organism of any sort whatever, large or small, is what it is because each member proceeds to his own duty," philosopher William James noted, "with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs."
Read MoreThe paralysis of modern democracies is often blamed on polarized politics. But there are structural causes for paralysis as well. These structural defects predated and fostered extremism and must be fixed for democracy to work again. Governing sensibly is impossible without a new operating framework activated by responsible humans.
Read MoreFormer EPA General Counsel E. Donald Elliott traces Philip Howard’s and Common Good’s efforts to streamline infrastructure permitting. “Every successful reform needs a sponsor, someone who is committed to seeing it through thick and thin over the years that it takes to get things done,” he writes.
Read MoreComing into the new year, it is vital to come to grips with the disease that most threatens American democracy—nearly universal distrust of its governing institutions. The anger and polarization rivening society are symptoms of distrust.
Read MoreWhat can we do about our country? That’s the question I hear most often. Washington is mired in a kind of trench warfare, with no prospects of forward movement. And Americans today can be divided into two camps: discouraged or angry. Americans are retreating into warring identity groups as extremists demand absolutist solutions to defeat the other side. It’s nighttime in America.
Read MoreWhat can we do about our country? That’s the question I hear most often. Washington is mired in a kind of trench warfare, with no prospects of forward movement. And Americans today can be divided into two camps: discouraged or angry.
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