Craziness is alive and well in Raleigh | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: Jim Bispo's weekly column appears in the Beaufort Observer

    The Republicans may have taken over the NC legislature for the first time in a long time, but the idiocy in Raleigh has apparently not been reined in yet - or even slowed down much. At least not yet. But we can always hope. Here is a beautiful case in point.

    We are going to save a bucket of money by consolidating our Community colleges. Give me a break. The people who dreamt that up belong in Washington (D.C. that is) because that is where that kind of thinking is considered worthwhile. The pitch is that by consolidating administrative staffs and setting up purchasing co-ops we can save a ton. It isn't clear what the justification for the consolidated purchasing activity is. Does that recommendation suggest that the state contract system that is already in place is ineffective or is a duplicate activity being proposed?? If the existing state contract system is a failure, shouldn't we either get rid of it or "fix" it?? We are going to set up a parallel system in order to save money?? Give me a break!!

    Now, think about this. Each Community College (are those what we used to call Junior Colleges??) currently has someone in charge and that individual has some amount of supporting staff to take care of things like personnel matters, budgeting, administrative chores, and the like. Does anyone truly believe that consolidating these facilities will obviate the need for someone to be in charge locally and for that person to have a supporting staff. No matter what they tell you, the answer is that all consolidation will do is add another layer of bureaucracy on top of the layer that is already there. It happens every time; and if this idiotic proposal is implemented, this time will be no exception.. That's all there is to it.

    In his book,"Free to Choose", Milton Friedman cites Dr. Max Gammon who was a British physician who spent 5 years studying the British Health Service; and I quote:

    "Dr Gammon was led by his survey to promulgate what he calls a theory of bureaucratic displacement: the more bureaucratic an organization the greater the extent to which useless work tends to displace useful work ..."

    Dr. Gammon was right. He described to a "T" what I call "playing office". That's what happens when you have more "watchers" than "workers" which is almost universally the case when we do things like are being proposed here. People are charged with "coordinating". Procedures are developed, refined, tested and then reworked in a seeming endless chain of largely useless activity. I am not suggesting that these "watchers" don't work hard; they do. What I am saying is that very often their work is non-productive; frequently it is counter-productive. And every time I hear of someone charged with "coordinating", I think of good 'ol Fred Sanford (remember him??).

    We are told that the so called "University System" has much higher per pupil costs and a whole lot more money in play, but nothing is said about considering their consolidation (which would likely be as dumb as the Community College consolidation proposal). But if we are looking to save money, wouldn't it make better sense to go looking where the money is - in the University system. And wouldn't it be better to have the high dollar managers of those facilities to take on the task of reducing expenditures than having someone with no responsibility for educational outcomes come up with crazy ideas like the one on the table.

    And if we still want to save more money, how about taking a look at the elected Superintendent of the Public Schools and the seemingly parallel position occupied by an individual appointed by the governess (hmmm...). Two people each trying to do the same job - with no guarantee that they are not working at cross purposes. Bev was elected and we let her run things. Why do you suppose that Bev can't seem to give that same courtesy to the elected Supt?? If we had only one person (with only one supporting staff instead of two) wouldn't we be able to save some money?? Or is this another one of those things like Bev's "walking around money" that she claims we need because she says we need it. Yeah, right.

    And one more thing. If we really want to save money, we should do away with idiotic panels like the one that came up with the proposal to consolidate Community Colleges. Anyone who would admit to the truth would agree that Community Colleges are a cost effective way of obtaining the first two years of a college education. Instead of squeezing them, we should be promoting them as the first two years of college.

    D'ya think??