But Why Do I Have to Live There?

Here is one of those "Gee, really, why?" things that get you thinking sometime.

I do not live in the District of Columbia, avoid it as much as possible, and couldn't care less about most of what goes on there.  But because they are so prone to stupid city government, they offer us up examples of laws that make you ask what they were thinking.

I'm not talking about those "It's still on the books", anachronistic laws that have been around for 150 years and some weasel finds them and writes a column on them.  I'm talking about, well, ones like this:

§ 1-515.01. District residency preference for employees; District residency requirement for agency heads.
   (a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, all District subordinate agencies, independent agencies, and instrumentalities [sic] shall use a ranking system based on a scale of 100 points for all employment decisions for positions equivalent to Career Service, educational employee, Legal Service, and Management Supervisory Service positions, as defined under § 1-603.01(3), (6), (13A), and (13B), and shall award each District resident applicant a preference of 10 points unless the resident declines the preference points. The 10 preference points shall be in addition to any points awarded on the 100-point scale.

So let's see what this actually says: the city that encompasses the seat of the United States Government, in deciding who the optimal candidate is to plow its streets, or defend its citizens, or program its computers, or staple its papers, actually concerns itself with where that candidate sleeps.

You know, and I know, and whoever wrote this abominable legislation knows, that it has nothing to do with how long it might take an emergency worker to get to his or her job.  Whether you live on the north side or the south side of Western Avenue doesn't make a difference; it's faster to get to parts of D.C. from parts of Maryland and Virginia than from some parts of D.C.

No; the purpose of the law is to implement by legislation the social concept that a non-zero part of the function of local government is to provide jobs for its own citizens.  I reject that notion in its entirety.

Government at any level serves at the pleasure of its citizens, solely to provide the minimum level of services demanded by those citizens at the least cost to its taxpayers.  If the citizens of Fairfax County, Virginia decide at the ballot that they want way more such services than those of Kootenai County, Idaho, they will pay for more of them and be taxed more.  Either way, however, it is their government's duty to provide the best such services for the budget their citizens have approved.

I contend that means that if I have $1 million in my budget to manage, say, the communications network of my jurisdiction, as a manager and hiring lead, it is my duty to the taxpaying citizen to obtain the best performers possible for the staff to do that job -- the best trained, the most experienced, the optimal usage of that budget for personnel to do the job.  As long as they are able to be on the job at the appointed times within the guidance of the personnel management rules, where they live is not relevant.

Our governments at any level (though this is really a local-government issue) are in business to provide services.  There is no argument that rationalizes mitigating the decision to hire the best performer by adding evaluation points to people based on residence.  This is strictly a political artifact put in to pander to voters.

If my local government were to try to persuade me it is doing the best with my tax dollar, I will be looking for competent and stable services provided, and evidence of how its hiring practices provide those by attracting the best value employees -- and the fewest of them -- wherever they can be found.  I don't care where they live, but rather what they do and how well they do it.  To think that there are governments that don't get that is frightening.

Some day we will get over the distressing thought that a government serving its citizenry does so by hiring more of them.  And some day most of D.C. will be part of Maryland and have to rip up their laws one by one, to be superseded by that State's wonderful ... oh yeah, right; it's Maryland.  Nothing will change.

Copyright 2014 by Robert Sutton