Sat, 22 Mar 2008

Evading the rules and learning from experience

Last week, the news was about the RI Resource Recovery Corporation, and it was enough to give anyone pause. A state audit uncovered land deals that seem pointless to the agency's charge, charitable contributions that seem to have been made at the pleasure of various RRC board members, and legal work awarded to friends and relatives.

There was some related news, too, though maybe it didn't seem that way to you. The House is considering a move by Governor Carcieri to merge the state's three environmental agencies, CRMC, DEM and the Water Resources Board. CRMC fired a salvo in that battle by pointing out that DEM workers had violated some wetlands rules by clearing land at Fishermen's park. (This was apparently not news at DEM and seemed mostly an attempt by CRMC to embarrass people into dropping the idea of the merger.)

What's related about these? Just this: both agencies were created to get around what were perceived as overly restrictive state rules, and both have lived up to their founders' intentions by becoming havens for, well, let's call it something less than the professionalism I expect from my government.

I produced a video about recycling in high schools for RRC, back when it was the Solid Waste Management Corporation in the early 1990's. (Apparently "solid waste" wasn't euphemism enough.) I later helped the staff, as a volunteer, in some experiments about plastic sorting and waste stream composition. I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw there. I worked with a few of the staff, and they were scrupulous and professional about their work. Most were working there because of their dedication to conservation and green ideals. Staff lunch conversation would drift to comparisons of car mileage and bicycle routes. One staff member kept an earthworm-compost bin in her filing cabinet, to compost lunch leftovers.

The video they hired me to make for them was about recycling, but was also about "source reduction", the idea that the way to make the landfill last longer is to educate people about buying fewer disposable things. The staff struck me as a bunch of creative and intelligent professionals, exactly the kind of people I'd want running the business of my state government.

Unfortunately, they were also largely the hires of a previous administration. Lincoln Almond appointed a new board chair, and shortly after A. Austin Ferland rolled up to his first meeting in his Bentley, the agency's director was sacked and almost the entire professional staff left, essentially all at once. Some left of their own accord and some didn't. Their replacements were the people who have since created the mess uncovered by the audit last week.

Under the rules that govern employees in state agencies, this kind of purge couldn't have happened. But in the free-floating world of "quasi-public" agencies that aren't government, but aren't not government, either, it's not a problem.

What about DEM and CRMC? Those with short memories will forget that the purpose behind creating CRMC in the early 1970's was to provide an end-run around restrictive DEM rules for friends of the legislature. That wasn't a side effect, that was the whole point: to get decisions about the development of valuable waterfront property out of the hands of DEM's professional staff and into the hands of political appointees.

In that role, CRMC has served its purpose admirably, allowing development all over sensitive coastal areas of our state for years, but only for people who hire the right attorneys or know the right board members. Over the years, there have been a few cases where CRMC was forced to find a spine, through the pressure of public opinion or staff work. But look at the Champlin marina controversy on Block Island. Even there, where CRMC did the right thing, they did it so badly that there's a good chance it will be overturned. Some protection. A more typical case was the Council's approval a couple of years ago of a building lot in Narragansett that was 98% wetland, against the recommendation of their own staff.

The Governor is exactly right that we don't need three environmental agencies, with overlapping jurisdictions and overlapping staff. (And while he's at it, he should consider that we also have two election agencies and two television stations, one of which is dormant six months a year.) He's wrong to think we can save a ton of money by combining them, though. (He plans to cut nine jobs out of 31.) We can save some, but DEM and CRMC staff are not famous for being underworked, but more for the backlogs in their workloads. In other words, good for the Governor for combining the agencies, but if he gets his way on the budgets, look for the permit approval process to become even longer than it is now.

So what do these two have in common? CRMC was created to have decisions free from restrictive DEM engineers. RRC is a quasi-public agency and therefore free from restrictive state employment rules. Both used their structure to get around restrictions, for better and, as we see, for worse. Employment rules and bureaucratic procedures in the state are often perceived as restrictive and confining, obstacles to doing business. But those rules were usually created in the wake of previous abuses, even if no one remembers exactly what they were. Governors and legislators who demand new ways around the old rules often demonstrate that, in many cases, we seem not to learn from our own experience.

17:41 - 22 Mar 2008 [/y8/cols] link

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