We are in Trouble, We Need Your Help

A Letter to State Government Employees

(This is the first of a yet-to-be-determined number of letters to a specific segment of our citizens, those who serve us by working in state government. I have spent the past 15 years working alongside many of you across the country in many states and many agencies. I have supported you, and I know how committed you are and how hard you work. I have also learned from many of you who patiently indulged my many questions. My belief is that YOU are in a unique and critical position to enable all Americans to thrive and our nation to prosper. My desire to help show you the path to follow to a better tomorrow.)

Letter #1

To Our State Government Employees,

Thank you for your service.

It is my intention to ask you to rethink your role in our society because I believe you are in a pivotal role – at a critical juncture – in our nation’s history. We need you.

I need to be negative for a minute.

The year 2021 proved what many of us have observed in this country over the years: More and more people are feeling marginalized, unheard, alienated, excluded, disenfranchised.

Pick a word – any word. They are all bad.

We as a nation are in trouble. The divide has widened and January 6th of 2021 showed that there is hatred in the streets and the taste of blood in a segment of our population’s mouths.

This is NOT going away. In fact, I believe the divide is widening.

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” -- Abraham Lincoln

I believe we are on a course for a great disruption in our society, one driven and fed by a growing sense that our nation is not fair. That some people get more than others. That the system is somehow rigged. And, sadly, a segment of our fellow citizens don’t accept people who are different from them.

Our country isn’t working. And I think we will be lucky to hold things together for another five years, maybe 10.?If we don’t make REAL changes, we risk losing our republic.

It is not my intent to be political, instead, practical.

I am trying to propose a path through all of this that you, and I, can own. It is a path that will be transformative in terms of what our government can accomplish.

To do this I will lay out a multi-level Theory of Change.

A theory of change is a?description of why a particular way of working will be effective, showing how change happens in the short, medium, and long term to achieve the intended impact.

?Here is what I propose is the overarching Theory of Change:

If our states can use their current level of resources to dramatically improve, expand, and add programs that help improve the lives of those who have been marginalized, it will dramatically reduce the issues dividing our nation.

In this series of letters, I will lay out what I see as a path forward through a set of complex challenges – a path I ask you to seriously consider.

Let me share some context I have gained in my work with state government – context that will help you better understand the challenges and the thinking behind the Theory of Change I am proposing.

Government is Overwhelmingly Huge

Our founding fathers could never have conceptualized the sheer size of the nation let alone the size of government.

Today about 26 million people work full-time for some governmental entity in this country.

The Federal government employs 6.3 million people; 1.4 million of whom are in the military and 2.0 million who work full-time as contract workers. States employ 5.5 million people and a whopping 14.2 million people work for counties, cities, townships, and special districts including schools.

Laws are made at the federal and state levels, rules and regulations are generally made at the department or agency level, and ordinances are made at the local government level. A total of?519,682 people serve as our elected officials with the number of local officials representing 96% of that number.

Federal government dollars rolling through states in the form of retirement benefits, safety net benefits, grants, contracts, and salaries and wages, account for somewhere around 20% of state economies – that is 20% of a state’s gross domestic product (GDP). These numbers were from before the pandemic.

There is no way our nation’s founders could have anticipated the sheer size of our country.

Hear me, I am not saying it is too big, that’s not my point. But its size contributes significantly to its complexity.

Our Laws are a Tangled Mess

Add to the complexity driven by size, we are a nation that believes in the rule of law. Perhaps it is more accurate to describe it as the rule of laws. We have on the books more laws than any nation in the history of the world.

How many laws (counting rules and regulations) do we have in the United States?

No one knows.

As a nation, we produce more new laws in a year than most countries produce in a decade.

States, of course, produce laws as well. The most prolific states sign into law over 1,000 new laws in a single year. Some underachieving states pass as few as 300. Oregon, a few years back when I last dug into these numbers, passed 971 laws during a single session of its Legislature. Those new laws led to over 25,000 pages of rules and regulations.

Laws, piled on laws, piled on more laws. Rules, piled on rules, piled on more rules. Regulations, piled on regulations, piled on more regulations. Imagine what Dr. Suess could do with this!

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised by the sheer number of laws. At the state level, there are 5,411 State Representatives and 1,972 State Senators. Lawmakers.

At the federal level, these numbers include 435 members of the House and 100 senators.

We have a total of 7,918 people in this country called lawmakers. When that is your title then that’s what you do.

Add to the new batch of laws the reality that we have no means by which laws are purged, cleaned-out, retired, erased. Somehow laws seem to fade away for a myriad of reasons. They aren’t cleaned up; they are simply sitting in dusty files in an unknown warehouse somewhere in the outskirts of your capital city

Did you know?

• In Michigan blasphemy is illegal. If you use the word damn in conjunction with God you just broke the law.
• You cannot bite someone during a boxing match in Utah.
• In Massachusetts it is illegal to swear at sporting events.
• You cannot use a false name at a hotel in New Hampshire.
• In Severance, Colorado it was against the law to throw snowballs – until the law was eliminated in 2019.
• Adultery is still a crime in New York.
• And in North Carolina dance halls can’t be located near cemeteries.

While it truly is an opportunity – materially reducing the laws on the books could well consume more resources and energy than it would be worth. Arizona cut over 2,000 rules and regulations in a concerted effort to make it easier to operate a business in the state.

But the simple reality is the vast majority of laws and not enforced; They simply have disappeared

Next week I’m going to focus on:

• What makes a state more complex than a multi-national corporation?
• How much waste is there in the processes in state government?
• And the death-by-a-thousand cuts strategy.

Then the following week, I will begin to lay out the details of my theory of and strategy for change.

John

I value your comments, ideas, and especially your disagreements.

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