This is where SC government problems start. It’s not where you think | The State

Columbia, SC

It has become a truism that state government is less than effective because its employees are underpaid and overworked. But what if the real problem is leadership and management?

I know something about those subjects, having retired from the Army as a major general after 35 years of service. In my final Army Reserve assignment, I was the chief executive of a nationwide organization of more than 13,000 people with an annual budget of more than $100 million.

I also worked as a state government attorney for 18 years, the last 12 at the Department of Insurance. I was hired at that agency, partly because of my military experience, to be a member of senior management. When I returned from my last active-duty tour, I found that I was no longer part of the senior management team and that my advice and counsel were unwelcome.

Click to resize

I did largely nothing during my last three years, save the odd assignment more suited for a law clerk than someone who has practiced law for more than a quarter century. But I continued to take home a senior manager’s paycheck. I wasn’t ready to retire, but I did anyway, earlier this year, because I could no longer work in an organization whose management either didn’t know that one of its most highly compensated employees did nothing or else thought that was acceptable.

Maybe mine was the only state agency where something like this could happen. I don’t know. But here’s what worries me: Neither does anybody else, because no one is asking the right questions.

I do know that leadership problems crop up at state agencies regularly. And I know this: State law has no mechanism to ensure that agencies hire deputy directors with the competence to keep the trains running on time.

I know the federal government has problems, but one thing it gets right is the senior executive service — career civil servants who work for the political appointees, and whose qualifications are evaluated by boards to determine whether they have what it takes to oversee the day-to-day work of running the government.

At the Insurance Department, I watched 20-somethings appointed as deputy directors — with their salaries nearly doubled in short order. A bachelor’s degree and youthful enthusiasm are insufficient qualifications for senior government executives.

I saw people promoted to senior positions not because of their experience and ability to challenge the boss when necessary, but because of their inexperience and lack of that ability — the antithesis of a competent organization. The department pays more than $500,000 to its five deputy directors (yes, there are five deputy directors for fewer than 100 employees); four of them take home more than the director of the State Emergency Management Division.

I understand that Cabinet officers are political appointees, but Cabinet agencies cannot work without knowledgeable, capable and experienced deputies to run them. And South Carolina’s system for selecting those managers is an invitation to cronyism and abuse. Unfortunately, oversight from both the General Assembly and the governor’s office is so lacking that management deficiencies can fly under the radar if a Cabinet official has good political skills.

For the past four years, I observed the absence of basic management processes, such as regular meetings to brief the director so he can make informed decisions and to get him smart on issues before meetings. I saw positions created and money spent to fill them with no apparent analysis of the need for those jobs. I saw senior leaders who did not understand the role of government lawyers and who were reluctant to make hard decisions.

I was once told that implementing a disaster response plan was not urgent because “we’ll muddle through” hurricane season. Muddling through — especially on something as important as disaster response — is hardly the hallmark of capable senior leadership.

If this is the accountability and efficiency we were promised in Cabinet government, then perhaps a reexamination is in order.

I do not pretend to know what goes on in all state agencies, but if even one can appoint unqualified people to senior positions and ignore even the most rudimentary management practices, then oversight is lacking. If it’s happening at one agency, it’s happening at one agency too many.

No matter how competent an organization’s rank-and-file workers, poor leadership and management beget ineffectiveness, waste and abuse. Our state’s taxpayers deserve better.