"So many people who 'serve' on all these various commissions, committees, authorities, and Task Forces on the local, statewide and national level don't seem to care how they spend your money. Or maybe they think of it as their money, or 'only' government money, which appears in their budgets like so much manna from heaven. It isn't. It's the hard-earned money of taxpaying citizens."
--Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, last Thursday.
If you work for the Metropolitan Housing Alliance in Little Rock and are seeing smaller paychecks these days because of those continuing furloughs, or if you were one of those workers the agency laid off last year (our sympathies), or if you're living in one of the housing complexes that the Housing Alliance runs and have been wondering why it's taken so long to fix the elevator in your building--like months--or if you're just a long-suffering taxpayer, the executive director of the whole operation, Rodney Forte, can explain all the controversy about some of his recent hiring decisions. Sort of.
Not that he's talking to you, mere citizens and taxpayers. He won't return messages or answer questions from the paper. But he did finally send a letter to the city manager explaining himself. Or trying to. (It must help to be in charge of Little Rock's city government when it comes to getting an answer from Mr. Forte.)
Even though 13 lower-level positions remain unfilled after layoffs and attrition at his agency, and even though the housing authority's remaining employees haven't had a raise in six years--that's right, six years--Executive Director Forte still hired a deputy executive director at some $92,000 a year because . . . well, he felt he should.
The executive director, who makes a cool $132,000 a year before furloughs, said he filled the deputy position because his board had given him a "directive of stabilizing the executive team." Why, sure. What better way to stabilize an executive team than adding to it? And if you assume that, maybe you work in government. Because, after all, it's just government money. Who needs housing managers and mechanics and folks who directly deal with the little people in public housing? Because what's really needed is more paper-pushers in administration. Just ask any administrator of a government agency.
It should be noted that Director Forte's letter didn't say why he hired still another bureaucrat earlier this year, this time a Director of Administrative Services, for nearly $80K when the previous Dir. of Adm. Serv. made less than $63K. Again, it's just government money.
Director Forte chose to close his letter to his superiors in city government by listing some of the agency's numerous "accomplishments." The clincher was this doozie: It received the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award just this past week from that august body, the Government Finance Officers Association.
This award may sound like a big deal, budget presentations being what they are in government work. Indeed the award is, if only to Mr. Forte's fellow bureaucrats. You can tell because 1,445 different government agencies applied for the award this year alone. And, whaddya know, a grand total of 1,424 were chosen as winners! All it costs is a few hundred bucks or so to apply for the award. (It's the Just Government Money operating principle at work again.)
But some questions still linger about Director Forte's direction of this outfit. For example:
How was the Alliance able to get by all those years without a deputy executive director?
How many of those who were laid off could have been hired back with the $92,000 it took to make his latest hire?
Why is a bigger and more expensive management team necessarily a more stable one?
And while the esteemed executive director is answering those questions, he might be able to spare a moment to tell us: Just how much do these new hires in management know about elevator repair? That's a field of expertise that might actually come in handy at the city's Metropolitan Housing Alliance. Especially if you live in a building whose stairwell you've come to know exceedingly well over the months of climbing it up and down, up and down, up and down . . . .
Just don't look to Rodney Forte for answers to any of those questions, Dear Citizens and Taxpayers. He's not talking. At least not to you. You only pay his salary.
Editorial on 09/30/2014