A word about accountability in government (and business)

I can't remember what I've written about the issues with the Smithsonian. Yesterday's Post has an article about financial improprieties by the now former director of the Smithsonian Business Ventures. See "Museum Ousts Gary Beer For Excess Expenses," subtitled
"Smithsonian Business Ventures Chief Is Told To Repay $30,000."

The issues are pretty simple:

1. Because salaries and bonuses have gotten so stratospheric in the private sector -- the tens of millions of dollars that CEOs make annually, and the hundreds of millions of dollars in severance -- people in "government" want to get paid too. (See "Home Depot's CEO Pay Fiasco" from Newsweek.)

2. Plus they are enamored of private sector "success" and "business methods." (See yesterday's discussion of the book, New Public Service.)

3. And so salaries, perks, and bonuses get jacked for executives (not the line staff). See "FDA's Retention Bonuses Rise to the Top," subtitled "Critics Say Money Goes to Managers, Not Scientists Coveted by Drug Firms," also from the Post.

4. Especially when the boards of directors are disconnected from the organization and provide little oversight.

In the New York Times a couple weeks ago, there was an article about how every time toll collection systems are automated toll rates go up and stay up, significantly, compared to the manual collection systems.

Increasingly, when government "cleans house" the salaries of the executives go up, in astoundingly signficant ways. See "D.C. Council Approves Rhee as Schools Chief," subtitled "Members Also Confirm Construction Director, but Salaries Draw Fire," from the Post.

E.g., the Chancellor of the DC School System is getting paid $275,000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to run the school system, which has fewer than 60,000 students.

The surrounding jurisdictional school districts that are much larger (Montgomery County, Prince George's County, Fairfax County) in terms of the student population (double or more compared to DC) pay that kind of money. But Rhee will still make more. See "Deasy Gets Raise After Evaluation By Board," subtitled "Schools Chief's Leadership Praised" also from the Post.

Now Bill Myers, the writer for the Examiner covering the DC government, has a cutline on his articles asking for people to write in with information about the Fenty Administration.

Here's an easy one, publish some tables comparing the salaries of various agency heads in the region, and compare them to similarly sized jurisdictions nationally.

This reminds me of a story I once read about Joseph Kennedy (father of John, Robert, and Ted...) and when he took over a movie company in Hollywood. He said, you pay accountants the way accountants are paid, not as if they are movie stars. (This happened at first by the way with the World Wide Web, before the skill sets to write applications for the Internet became more widespread.)