Today, longtime generally center-left columnist George Skelton at the Los Angeles Times penned a lengthy missive that was no less than a full-fletched smack-down of GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. Skelton’s major assault on Whitman comes from his belief that she is out of line in how she characterizes the massive size of state government and an ever-growing unsustainable state workforce. You can hear Skelton fuming as he types, “Whitman didn’t call them civil servants, of course. She used the time-tested conservative, red meat pejoratives ‘bureaucrats’ and bureaucracy.’”
Skelton assaults Whitman as if she is literally attacking every single state government employee as terrible and evil. The reality is that it is pretty clear, from reading Whitman’s remarks (the whole speech to which Skelton refers can be read here), that she is making a generalization about the vast size of the state’s work force, and when Whitman says, “…And a selfish and arrogant bureaucracy, unwilling to give even an inch in the toughest of economic times…” – it is clear to me that she is talking about how in the midst of a recession, the public employee union chiefs have fought in every way possible any reductions or furloughs, or any efforts to bring down the costs of government, given plummeting state tax revenues in this poor economy.
Here, with some paragraphs before and after it for context, are Whitman’s remarks, so you can judge them for yourself:
Think about what that means… Think about the number of heartbreaking conversations that have taken place: Employers telling long-time employees they must go… Husbands telling wives that they can’t afford their homes… Parents telling children their college dreams are over.
For Californians who still have jobs, taxes and fees are eating into their lives. Every year we pay more to sustain an out-of-control state bureaucracy… A wasteful bureaucracy, out of touch with the needs of Californians… And a selfish and arrogant bureaucracy, unwilling to give an inch even in the toughest of economic times.
During the past decade, California’s government spending has grown by 80 percent, while our bureaucracy has increased by 28 percent. Do you feel like our state is 80 percent better? … Of course it isn’t…
And since 2004, state government has added more than 40,000 employees. This year, at a time of deep recession, when local governments, families and businesses across our state are cutting back, the government of California has actually hired 10,000 more bureaucrats! Is it any wonder that Californians are fed up?"
Skelton goes on his piece to make the case for why reducing the size of the state’s workforce will be a very difficult task, and by and large he makes some very good points. But one thing is clear, it isn’t going to happen if our next Governor didn’t make it abundantly clear, like Whitman has done above, that it is a major priority and something that needs to get done.
In characterizing Whitman as being “arrogant” – Skelton then goes on to basically accuse Whitman of throwing stones from a proverbial glass house – citing her own prolific lack of voting as arrogant in its own regard. I am not going to defend Whitman’s deplorable lack-of-voting – it’s terrible.
But I am not going to stand for Skelton somehow making the case that tough rhetoric is uncalled for in making the case for significantly reducing the state’s workforce.
I will be waiting for Skelton’s column blasting the “arrogance” of the state’s public employee unions. But it may take a while if he first wants to attack every candidate running for office who uses, as Skelton says, a “derogatory description of state workers.”
The column actually does a tremendous disservice to state employees – because an uninformed reader might actually conclude that individual public employees are being bashed, when the reality is that a generalization is being made about the inability to meaningfully shrink the size public work force.