In “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 MoreRich Valdés interviews Philip Howard about Not Accountable.
Read MoreWe read this week, in a column by teachers union president Randi Weingarten, that teachers unions “empower teachers’ professionalism,” cause “higher student achievement,” were heroic during COVID, and create “a more just and fair society.” Ms. Weingarten also accuses Philip Howard of “empty rhetoric.” So let’s look again at the facts: Near-zero accountability, endemic failure of many inner city schools, refusal to return to the classroom during COVID until six months to a year after other schools reopened, and political bullying aimed at closing high-performing charter schools.
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 MoreSchoolchildren all learn that the spoils system in the 19th century was evil. No matter how inept, political hacks got and kept government jobs. The currency was campaign support: Public jobs were for sale to the highest bidder. The idea of “good government” was an oxymoron.
Fast forward to today. No matter how inept, public employees keep their jobs.
Read MoreJoe Selvaggi interviews Philip Howard about Not Accountable.
Read MoreCalifornia Policy Center President Will Swaim interviews Philip Howard about Not Accountable.
Read MoreWhich is the party of good government? Democrats like to claim that mantle, but Joe Klein in his new Substack "Sanity Clause" describes how public employee unions are "an issue no Democrat wants to talk about." Klein, former senior columnist at TIME and best-selling author, is clear-eyed about the unholy alliances that make liberal sanctimony so hard to take. Fixing lousy schools and toxic police cultures is impossible as long as public employee unions call the shots.
Read MoreThe Wall Street Journal’s Paul Gigot interviews Philip Howard about Not Accountable.
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 MoreHere’s the public failure of the week: Twenty-three schools in Baltimore have not one student who is "proficient" in math—i.e., performing at grade level. Another 20 schools have only one or two students who are proficient. In Chicago, Wirepoints discovered, 33 schools similarly have no student proficient in math, and another 22 schools have no student proficient in reading.
Read MorePhilip Howard talks about Not Accountable with Michael Taylor.
Read MorePhilip Howard talks about Not Accountable with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
Read MoreAEI President Robert Doar moderates a conversation with Philip Howard about Not Accountable.
Read MoreThe headache of managing government under union strictures is not exactly a secret. But the managerial disempowerment of governors, mayors, and other elected executives seems to have caught people by surprise.
There may be ten million management books, but we can’t find one that talks about what happens when managers no longer have authority to manage—for example, to hold employees accountable, or to redeploy resources to meet new circumstances.
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 MoreThe ingredients of a bad public culture are hard to pinpoint with precision. But, in the case of the police squad that beat Tyre Nichols to death, the factors include inadequate training and police union collective bargaining agreements that allow experienced officers to avoid the street duty where experience is most needed.
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