The Oregonian reported today that a group of chest-thumping legislators are demanding to know why no one was fired over the Department of Revenue's mistake in issuing a $2 million tax refund based on a fraudulent return. The legislators were from both parties: it was a bipartisan kangaroo court!
Why was no one fired? Well, let's see. Even if the Department of Revenue were a private corporation, firing employees just isn't as much fun as it used to be. Trial lawyers, in a feeding frenzy at the trough of employment lawsuits, have created a world in which relations between organizations and their employees is set by case law, not by any rational approach to human relations. Sure, people can be fired for cause, as long as they aren't part of a protected class, which now includes all carbon-based organisms.
But the Department of Revenue operates under the further burden of being a government agency. The employees who should have been reviewing the tax return are protected by a collective bargaining agreement that allows almost any management decision to be second-guessed by an arbitrator who is for all intents and purposes controlled by the union. If Portland police officers can't be fired for using bad judgment that results in someone's death, or a teacher can't be fired for being unlicensed (licensing is admittedly a silly idea, but it is nonetheless a legislatively-imposed requirement), then how in the world could DOR fire an overworked employee for not having the time to do a thorough job?
And who came up with the insanity that is the Public Employees Collective Bargaining Act? Could it be......the legislature? Sure, it was a different bunch than the current group of grandstanders, but refusal to repeal a bad law is just as reprehensible as passing it in the first place.
And the situation is more complicated. After years of wage freezes and furlough days, many of the good employees have long since left; all that remain are dissillusioned and abused folks just hanging on for their PERS payoff. Budget cuts have created unrealistic workloads; especially in the human services area, it is humanly impossible to meet the demand for service. And who, exactly, is responsible for this situation? Maybe...the legislature?
Aristotle tells us that statesmen can be regular folks and not professional politicians, but they should at least possess moral virtue and the knowledge and judgment to govern effectively.
So the solution is simple. When a group of legislators ask such a flagrantly stupid (and hypocritical) question as, "why didn't someone get fired?"they should be, well, fired.
