Since Doug was such a great sport giving to the critters back here, I’m including this extreme case of gummint waste for his enjoyment:
(CNN) — A worker was paid for 12 years without ever showing up for work at a Norfolk, Virginia, agency funded by federal, state and local money, officials say.
Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim told CNN on Friday that when a new director took over at Norfolk Community Services Board recently, she was “doing her due diligence” when she discovered the hooky-playing employee was on the books. The director, Maureen Womack, then notified the city attorney’s office, Fraim said.
Sandy Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Community Services Board, told CNN Friday that her agency couldn’t comment because of the ongoing investigation.
On behalf of the city attorney’s office, Norfolk city spokeswoman Terry Bishirjian referred to a statement released on Wednesday that said, “The city attorney’s office, with the approval of Womack, took appropriate steps to prevent any further payments to the employee and the employee was terminated.”
They fired her now, huh? I’ll bet that’s a bitter pill for her — if she can stop laughing long enough.
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Thank you.
One down, one million to go.
Did I ever tell you about the time a government computer programmer told me he purposefully put bugs into his programs so he could be paid overtime to fix them? That was about 15 years ago. He’s probably still working on the same program.
At an event with several very hard-working and highly competent city staffers yesterday, we laughed about how they have to put tracking devices on certain suspected employees–Durham Carter will tell you about the garbage trucks parked for hours outside houses of ill repute (of the pharmaceutical nature, chiefly) in his neighborhood…. some of which are properties owned by a certain now(?) incarcerated former councilperson.
Brad, the Norfolk story is far from finished.
Typically, the supervisor/manager/director who has a phantom employee who does not really exist keeps the misdirected proceeds of bogus payroll checks.
In the case of an existng person who is a no-show, there is normally a healthy kickback to the supervisor/manager/director.
Authorities know this. But wait, it gets better! The Norfolk City Auditor was not doing his/her job for 12 years, either. This could either be because the external auditor was too lax, or because the person holding the City Auditor title was an elected incompetent (likely), or an appointed crony (possible).
Norfolk has one of the highest concentrations of audit professionals in the U.S. All of them are aware of the obvious red flags, and this story is far from dead because their buzz will keep it alive until proper follow-ups are performed and reported.
Some politicians in Norfolk have to be on pins and needles by now if one of the crooks or cronies is their kin.
But wait, it gets even better: crooks are never satisfied with small ill-gotten gains. Having gotten away with this for 12 years (or more) encouraged the perpetrator(s) to keep more than one phantom employee on the city’s payroll. Ready for 15-20?
Let’s see how long the lawyers can keep it under wraps. Good thing the next election may be only months away, or is it?
Yet another person joining the ranks of the unemployed.
Actually, he or she was already unemployed, but was just getting paid for it.
It was a “no-show,” as opposed to “no-work,” only she managed it without Tony Soprano’s help. I don’t think even Ton’ could arrange 12 years.
And Juan, you kept us in suspense right up until the last two lines. We were all wondering how you would blame this one on the lawyers…
@Doug,
Why didn’t you report that computer clown?
@tjc27
Report to whom? I was a contractor, not an employee. And it wasn’t just him – the behavior was pervasive throughout the entire IT organization. When management covers for lazy employees, it allows them to be lazy as well. Many of the managers had “countdown” clocks on their desks showing the number of years, months, days, and hours until they could retire. You can imagine how much innovation and customer service you get out of people with that kind of attitude.
There was one older gentleman who came in every morning, sat at his desk, napped for awhile, pulled out an electric shaver and shaved, went back to sleep, woke for lunch, surfed the internet in the afternoon, put on his porkpie hat and went home. That went on for five years. One of the few government employees there who actually tried to get work done had to write this guy’s performance review every year. And every year the upper management would tell him to just mark him down as a satisfactory performer – because it was easier to keep him than to go through the process of getting rid of him.
Tell me how often that happens in private industry (except for family owned businesses)?
Lite thought: Guess who will be filing an unemployment claim (and getting away with it in SC).
Sober thought: IRS should be keenly interested in (at least) 12 years bogus SS, FICA and fed tax withholdings. And hold on to your seats: one, the malfeasance occurred in a public (political) office, two, these are criminal issues of tax evasion and fraud, and three, the possible blow to the image of that state’s professional audit community.
Also, @Doug, you don’t think that only happens in goverment jobs, do you? I’m sure you’ve been around the block enough times that you’ve seen that sort of behaviour (and worse) in and out of government. I know I have!
@SusanG
Of course I’ve seen people in the private sector who are able to get away with not doing much work. It just occurs far less frequently in the private sector by my observation over 20+ years as a consultant.
Tell me how often that happens in private industry (except for family owned businesses)?
-Doug
Maybe not too often but in many family owned businesses the little darlings who are in high positions merely by virtue of their birth mother do undermine the value of the company. I’ve seen it on several occassions.
The bigger problem with private industry is how the owners can get away with extremely poor treatment of their employees. Especially now when folks need any kind of a job the poor working shlubs who try to do a good job are treated with disdain. It creates a terrible environment in which the workers are pitted against management. Workers can and do try to get away with stuff that they would never try if they were merely treated with a modicum of respect.
And businesses treat customers with the same atrocious disrespect. And how can businesses get away with this? Simple, they have monopoly power and/or government regulators in their hip pockets. BP is, of course, the poster child for this kind of reckless behavior. The odds of any high level manager at BP suffering any serious consequences because of their behavior is sadly quite small. Yet folks like Doug insist that this cannot happen. Yet it does. Sadly it does to a growing extent as our economy continues to flounder.
@Doug,
I think I more often see folks in government not terribly motivated because there’s almost no opportunity to move up the ranks quickly — you just have to wait your turn, basically. And there’s no working for bonuses, either. And in general, it does seem to me that government retains more folks than the private sector that just aren’t that bright. However, it also has a lot of good folks who do a great job, even with little reward in terms of raises year after year.
I also can tell many stories of private sector incompetence, though, that are equally bad to anything I’ve seen in government.
I appreciate your 20+ years as a consultant. You’re not the only person here who has that level of experience.
@bud
The CEO of BP lost his job. Let me know when someone from the government who was responsible for overseeing BP loses his.
@SusanG
You’re right, the typical government worker trades salary for a pension and retirement benefits. They trade job security for job advancement. It’s pretty easy to see that the type of worker who works for the government will have a different approach.
Minerals Management Service Director Elizabeth Birnbaum was forced out or fired.
Thanks for making that point, tjc27. Here’s a link to a story about that in the NYT, “Minerals Management Service Director Resigns Over Spill.”
Wonder about their respective ‘parachutes’?
You might also want to note that Ms. Birnbaum was forced out in late May (going by the above link), whereas Tony Hayward wasn’t forced out until late July.
So the public sector was two months faster than the private, by the measurement that Doug proposes.
This is not right at all… im glad this so called worker was fired and no longer getting payments for the work he did not do for 12 years. There are people that need work and he was not even doing his job period and getting paid on top of that isnt fair. THis employee got what he deserved in the end and im glad he was terminated.
I’ll give you that point on the Director of MMS if you will do some research and see how many years PRIOR to the oil spill the MMS was considered one of the most corrupt government organizations.
So your timeline is off, Brad. Petty corruption is timeless in government. It took a major disaster to get a token firing.
Here’s a link to the Inspector General’s report back in 2007.
http://www.silobreaker.com/ig-report-on-mms-corruption-5_2263470975800573953
The “Culture of Ethical Failure” was well described by the DOI Inspector General in this report in Sept. of 2008. Read the first two pages. Chuckle about the part where the IG details illicit sex, alcohol and drug abuse. Now, go back to the first paragraph and re-read the mention that one person pled guilty to a criminal charge but others ”escaped potential administrative action by departing from federal service, with the usual celebratory send-offs that allegedly highlighted the impeccable service that these individuals had given the Federal Government.” As far as the other employees that were referred to the Department of Justice for possible prosecution? “That office declined to prosecute.”
—
Before you put someone up on a pedestal, you may want to check if they’re wearing underwear.
He or she ought to be prosecuted, actually.
So your timeline is off, Doug. Petty corruption is timeless in business. It took a major disaster to get a token firing.
See how well it works both ways?
Doug is never going to figure out that we will ALWAYS know more about waste and corruption in government than in the private sector because government is directly accountable to us, and private business is not. Nor should it be. This fact does not make one sector better than the other. It just states a fundamental fact about the differences between them.
Doug,
Thanks for moving the chains on that play. Ask a question, get an answer, then re-ask the question to get another answer.
@Brad… brad.. brad
You said the government was faster at responding when in fact the problem with the government PRECEDED the oil spill. So it was your timeline that was wrong.
You just don’t get it. You won’t even use basic reading comprehension skills to see that there is little accountability for the government waste. The Inspector General’s report says exactly that. They found waste, fraud, and abuse and DID NOTHING ABOUT IT.
I know it’s easier to just pretend reality doesn’t exist to match your philosophy, but at some point you have to look at facts.
What was the impact on BP from the disaster (all justified)?
1) CEO fired (probably many more people fired that we will never know about)
2) Tens of billions of dollars in fines/payments for losses
3) Likely billions of dollars in future lawsuits, years of litigation
4) Billions of dollars in lost shareholder value
5) Unmeasurable damage to the BP brand
What will be the impact on MMS? Little to nothing. An organization that is corrupt from top to bottom will continue to exist.
Doug, there is a loooong history of devastating environmental damage done by BP: Oil refineries blowing up, pipelines spilling, etc. While it is true that government oversight was lacking, especially during the Bush years, it is also true that the invisible hand of the free market utterly failed the people. I would love to see what the BP-CEO’s buyout is. Sorry Doug, the free market has many, many, many failures. BP is but one. We desperately need a strong, active government to help regulate the market. Otherwise we risk catastrophe every day.
@bud
By “the Bush years” you mean over a year and a half ago, right? How long will it be before Obama is responsible? Just wondering. And had the oil spill not happened, when do you think Obama would have cleaned up the MMS?
If the government failed for years doing X, under what form of logic can you believe they can do X better by doing more of X? Same thing for the SEC. Same thing for FEMA. Let’s see the track record for performance before we expand on the powers.
Here’s another example of government accountability in action — today’s news:
“WASHINGTON – A Texas congresswoman admitted that she wrongly steered thousands of dollars in college scholarships from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation to her own relatives and the children of a staff member but said she did so unintentionally.”
http://www.startribune.com/politics/101834768.html
Unintentionally gave out 23 scholarships to her own grandchildren over the past five years. And she has the gall to think she should remain in office and probably will due to being in a gerrymandered district that locks in a Democrat.
Sure, that’s accountability…
Hayward wasn’t even fired; he was re-assigned.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/07/26/2010-07-26_gulf_oil_spill_bp_ceo_tony_hayward_to_move_into_role_in_companys_russian_operati.html
Doug,
I think if you recall correctly, Texas was magnificently gerrymandered by Tom Delay. The party in power in the legislature is the one that organizes the districts. There are corrupt clowns on both sides of the political aisle, and in any event, Congressman come up for a vote every 2 years.
@tjc27
Sure, they created districts that favor Republicans in the most areas and give the Democrats ones that are sure things. The question is why would she remain in the race? The answer is that Democrats can’t afford to lose ANY seats and will keep a crook before they give it to a Republican.
I think you are right. Similar, but not as egregious as the Attorney General firing a US Attorney in San Diego for pursuing Randy “Duke” Cunningham in his criminal bribery and influence peddling. That was a seat they didn’t want to lose, regardless of his ‘indiscretions’. There are crooks all over the political map, as I am sure you are aware.