Chicago                                                    

Leadership is the key, not 'Reinventing Government By PAUL M. GREEN

Summer is over. It's time once again, therefore, to present the Martin J. Dooley awards. The following kudos honor the tradition of Chicago's late fictional saloon keeper/philosopher whose political reflections and opinions "unstuffed" many a shirt at the beginning of the century.

On "Reinventing Government." Public administrators from Vice President Al Gore to village managers in suburban Cook County are spouting policy parables from David Osborne and Ted Gaebler's 1992 book, Reinventing Government. The public sector is now being bombarded with insights on how to improve government efficiencies, cut bureaucracies and solve long-standing policy problems. Among the more popular terms are the authors' call for entrepreneurial government, employee empowerment and a series of 10 commandments for improving public organizations. Examples of commandments to the government administrators: steer more than you row, and be driven by your missions not your rules.

Reinventing Government apostles play on the frustrations of Americans about government performance, using cute anecdotes smothered in a great deal of elitism. In short the whole reinventing government movement resembles trying to sell Hamlet as great drama with casting by the Brady Bunch and "California Dreaming" as background music. For the record on the government already invented; it is "large" by every measure — spending, employment, contractual services, etc., — no matter which level — local, state and national. Plain ordinary citizens may have trouble finding which agency has the "mission" that matches some service they need, but they expect to find it and if they already are getting the service, they don't want to lose it. The not so ordinary citizens whose business depends on government's buying their products or services might be willing to reinvent government to save on redtape but not to endanger their shares of the government market.

Government spending and performance are driven not by those who administer the dollars but by those who receive the services

Whether in Chicago public schools, Illinois state government or the national government, leadership is needed to clear up the fog before either rowing or steering:

• Government spending and performance are driven not by those who administer the dollars but by those who receive the services.

• Cutting the fat in the labor intensive public sector, other than slight managerial trimming, means one thing: laying off employes.

Given the growth of (1) public employee unionism, (2) civil service protection, (3) increased service demand and (4) taxpayer revolts, improving public sector performance will take more than clever sayings; rather it will take political action — based on num-

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bers, not rhetoric. Who is willing to pay more taxes for more professionalized public servants, and who is willing to receive fewer services from government?

• Finally, urban and rural elected officials do not have the economic leverage or the political culture to unleash appointed administrators into the decision-making process. Issues such as jobs, race, poverty, infrastructure and education policy need policy solutions, not government reinvention.

On presidential leadership. Bill Clinton did not take stupid pills once he said "so help me God" on the steps of the Capitol last January. Unfortunately for the president, he soon found he could not govern as he campaigned. Adjective- and adverb-laden campaign speeches promising change had to give way to presidential decision-making detailing change with nouns and verbs. Thus the problem.

Clinton is still bright as ever, but the man has the smallest political base of any president elected in this century. Simply calling a new policy "change" does not make it automatically popular or correct with 57 percent of the electorate who voted against him, a fact that the president and some of his hired "young gun" aides forget once they are inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Someone should remind Clinton of the old Chicago political maxim: "Power comes from the ability to punish not reward." Voting against the president on major bills holds little fear for most Democrats and no fear at all for Republicans. Compare Clinton's power position with that of former President Ronald Reagan who, in 1981, terrified southern Democrats into backing his key legislative proposals. Clearly White House leadership demands more than clever brain power; it also requires intimidating political muscle and a solid political base.

On the Chicago public schools financial crisis of '93. Martin J. Dooley awards will be reserved until next summer to see if the schools are in or out of another crisis. *

Paul M. Green is director of the Institute for Public Policy and Adminstration, Governors State University, University Park.

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