The summer after high school, I worked as a stock boy in a busy
retail shoe store. The stock was stored in the basement and attic
of an old inner city commercial building without air conditioning.
Running up and down those narrow stairs every two minutes in the
heat and humidity of a New Jersey summer was a real chore.
The summer after high school, I worked as a stock boy in a busy retail shoe store. The stock was stored in the basement and attic of an old inner city commercial building without air conditioning. Running up and down those narrow stairs every two minutes in the heat and humidity of a New Jersey summer was a real chore.
To provide some incentive, every once in awhile the boss would say, “You know what you get if you do a good job? You get to keep it.” It was both a joke and a threat; anyone who was ever really needed a job knows exactly what I’m talking about.
I guess County Public Works Director Jerry Lo didn’t do a good job because he did not get to keep it. Lo was placed on administrative leave until his official departure in December, then he will receive a six-month severance paycheck per his employment contract. A few things about this episode bother me and since I’m a part owner of the county government, I’ll get them off my chest.
My first question is why was Mr. Lo fired? The county won’t say, but being fired is not the same as being laid off. Being fired means either poor performance, misconduct or both. By refusing to specify why Mr. Lo was fired, the public is being kept in the dark; they cannot evaluate several important matters directly related to this action. Some of those might be the mistakes that were made during the hiring process; others might be the lack effective review processes and/or controls that prevented early detection and correction of any performance issues. Perhaps this was a case where everything was done right, but it came out wrong, it happens; however, without public review we shall never know. Self-criticism is not government’s strong suit.
The second question is why are we offering six-month severance packages and why do contracts lack negation clauses voiding the severance pay in the event of poor performance or misconduct? We fired Mr. Lo, but after his leave, he’s going to walk away with six months of severance pay – that’s a platinum-plated parachute for being fired. County jobs are good jobs, with good pay, great benefits and decent working conditions, why are we offering incentives to get people to take them. It’s one thing to offer well-structured performance-based incentives; it’s another to give away the taxpayers money. This is an expensive mistake.
The third question is, are we just recycling bad public employees back into the job market and is someone else doing the same thing to us? Since the county will not tell the public why Mr. Lo was fired, it’s logical to assume that they will not tell any future potential employer either. Someone else is probably doing the exact same thing to us. It appears from many newspaper reports that California county and city governments play a game of “pass the bad penny” where they avoid litigation and acrimony ye just passing their problem on to the next unsuspecting employer and we get our turn in the barrel. At six months pay a pop, you can make a career out of being booted.
State and local government employees are well compensated, especially in the management and public safety positions. When all the benefits are included, they do much better financially than employees in the private sector. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average total compensation cost for the private sector is 50 percent more than the costs for the state and local governments. Why is the county offering extraordinary severance pay? We may not be able to do anything about Mr. Lo’s contract, but we certainly can about the next contract.
To prevent a repeat of this error the county government needs to take four steps. Improve the hiring process, make sure the performance reviews are timely and effective, review and update the controls, and do not overpay for our human resources. There is no free money; it comes from the taxpayers’ pockets.
If the county’s rebuttal is that everything is working fine, then why are they keeping it all a secret?
