December 2002

Trust No One

By James Eugene*

You are a worker for City government. You are out in the field. You are visiting a building site. It is cold outside. The site foreman offers you a cup of coffee. You better not say yes. If you do, you may lose your job.

Common sense no longer prevails in City government. Some City agencies have issued memoranda to their employees telling them they can no longer accept cups of coffee or chocolate bars while on the job. The memoranda are a direct reaction to scandals involving inspectors at the Buildings Department and assessors at the Finance Department. For some reason, the corruption police think that these rules will now prevent the next corruption scandal. Of course, you can see the future headlines now… "Restaurant inspectors off to jail for eating too many free Mars bars. Commissioner says that first sign of corruption was employee weight gains!"

Morale among city employees is already low. Workers already worry about layoffs, face no or miniscule raises and now they receive memoranda that basically say that they too are under suspicion. Oh, and by the way, the Mayor wants you, City employee, to do more with less. That is, of course, the billionaire mayor, who is so pure, you cannot smoke, so rich, he does not take a salary, and so sure, because no political rival seems to want to stand up to a billionaire political neophyte and say no. Unless, of course, you are a Republican office holder for whom the Mayor has done many political favors, such as the Governor and the State Senate Majority Leader.

Someone needs to ask the question, do such petty anti-corruption measures really work? Or do they simply lead to lower worker morale and less efficient government? Everyone knows that despite the anti-corruption measures of this Administration, we will in the future see more corruption scandals. They have been going on since the beginning of time. This Mayor, no matter how pure he may think he is, will not stop it. In fact, he will not put a dent in it. The corruption scandals that are hitting the media all started under that Mayor/Prosecutor, who, for some unknown reason, fails to receive any political fall-out from these corruption scandals that were occurring on his watch.

But the run of the mill worker, who faces no pay increase. They are told they are under the microscope, they must constantly justify their judgment to investigators who often do not understand their work and God forgive them if they make a mistake. If you are the best and the brightest, avoid employment in City government.

Welcome to the (Dis)Information Age….

Did you know the County Committees of the Democratic Party in New York City have web-pages? Now we know that no one was enamored by term limits, but is that any reason that the Democratic party webpages for Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and Staten Island all list long-since gone Council Members as current members of that august body? Kudos to the Bronx for listing their actual current members of the City Council.

* James Eugene is the pseudonym of a veteran of NYC government affairs. Inside The Big Apple will appear exclusively on the Empire Page. If you want to send tips or column ideas to James Eugene, email them to jameseugene@empirepage.com.