What Is the Proper Role of the Bureaucrat?

The NYTimes has an article discussing the pipeline being proposed to run across Canada and much of the US.  The pipeline opponents believe that a bureaucrat in the State Department was inappropriately helping a lobbyist for the pipeline, who had a political connection to Clinton.  It raises for me the question of what is the proper role of a bureaucrat:

• the neutral arbiter of the rules, enforcing them as best you can, rather like an umpire in a baseball game?
• the advocate for the cause, like the Army Chief of Staff for the army? 
• the helpful postal clerk, who attempts to guide the aged customer with an odd package through his options?
• the social worker, encouraging the client to do the right thing? 
• the FBI agent, enforcing the law? 

Seems to me all of the above are appropriate in context.  

There's also the question of different personalities: some people are effusive and outgoing, others (the better ones I say with total bias) are reserved and taciturn.

It's often difficult to judge a bureaucrat's behavior fairly without seeing a lot of their interactions with clients/customers.

Those Underpaid CEO's

The Post today reveals the nation-wide shortfall in CEO pay: it seems at least half the CEO's in America are underpaid, failing to make the median income.

Great Bureaucrats?

Government Executive Magazine has a list of 20 great American government bureaucrats. Not sure I agree with all the judgments: if number of Presidential nominations is the rule Elliot Richardson might deserve a mention, as well as his resignation in the Saturday Night Massacre.  I'd also throw Ben Franklin into the mix.

Farm Bill Proposals

Stu Ellis at Farmgate reviews some proposals for changed farm programs.

The Pack of Aides

The Project on Government Operations observes that the top brass arrive to testify before Congress with a pack of aides.  They're critical, as well they might be.  Their point is there are too many generals and admirals in proportion to the grunts.

However there's a counter argument, which may not apply to testimony before Congress but can apply to attendance at meetings.  One of the best things I think a manager can do is to highlight the contributions of subordinates. If a manager brings staff to a meeting, he/she should often be able to have the staff person do the talking and arguing.  I was able to do that sometimes, though often my know-it-all tendencies interfered.  :-(

The Solar Decathlon and the Weather

Several colleges are participating in the "Solar Decathlon", a contest to build green housing within a set of constraints, with the model house erected on the Mall, or this year in West Potomac Park.  U of MD won the architectural award.  This year since Tropical Storm Lee went through earlier this month the sun has been in little evidence.  That's unfortunate, because many of the features of such houses depend on reasonably sunny weather, which the DC area usually has in September, but not this year.

WSJ Gets Something Wrong

Greg Mankiw links to a Wall Street Journal story about SSA and the processing of disability claims.  It includes this paragraph:

The directive stemmed from a wrinkle in the federal calendar, in which this week fell between the federal government's 2011 and 2012 fiscal years. This happens every five or six years, as officials are allowed to count just 52 weeks in their calendar. Counting this week would make the current fiscal year 53 weeks long. That meant any applications for disability benefits completed between Monday and Friday wouldn't count toward the annual numerical targets set for Social Security judges or field offices.

This is, of course, wrong, at least in the sense the federal government's fiscal year is 365 or 366 days, not 52 weeks.  I suspect SSA set up weekly and yearly targets in their workload reporting system, with no provision for part-week reporting.  So this is a case where the bureaucratic system pinches the applicant, and shouldn't occur.

ARRM Bill S 1626

Farm Policy has the text of the Brown/Thune/Lugar/Durbin   bill establishing the Aggregrate Risk and Revenue Management Program. Given the prominence of the co-sponsors, it's got to be taken seriously.  See this for a diagram of the calculations.

I'm too far away from current law to comment reliably, but I didn't see the commodity-specific determination as all that specific in the bill's language.  I do wonder about WTO compliance, because the program is tied to planted acreage and seems to discourage switching to new crops. That was a prime selling point for "Freedom to Farm", which became the direct payment program.

In terms of administration, I surely hope FSA and RMA have merged into one entity, because I don't see how it can be effectively administered otherwise.  Assuming FSA writes the checks, they need the RMA APH and insurance premium amounts, plus the planted acreage and the actual production.  I shudder at the complexities.  I also wonder how MIDAS would plan to handle it.

French Bureaucrats Are Like American Bureaucrats

Words of experience from Dirk Beauregarde:

"The problem comes from our new boss. Like animals marking their territory as only animals know how, our new big chief is busy reorganising his new "kingdom" by changing acronyms and getting all his staff to play musical offices. Only a question of time before the new headman starts to come up with ideas - I believe they are called initiatives -

Initiatves are generally old ideas that get rediscovered when a new boss open the bottom draw on his desk and finds files crammed with "ideas". These ideas have been consigned to the bottom draw[er] because they were essentially bad ideas, but the new boss will get them out, dust them down, set up a commiittee to look at the idea and how it can be implemented. After the committee has held endless meetings and rehashed the unworkable idea into words of several syllables, the old idea becomes a new initiative. We are bound to follow the new "policy" and thus are asked to attend hours and hours of training sessions, given by people who don't understand the new initiative themselves.

Of course, nothing works, or if it does work, it is because we all ignore the initiatve and do things the old way. No matter, things are working and the credit is thus given to the boss and his new idea.

Sod/Swamp in New Farm Bill?

Philip Brasher reports Sen. Grassley is undecided on whether sod/swamp provisions should apply to farmers who buy crop insurance.

I don't know how well NRCS and FSA are doing these days in coordinating their work flows, but back in the old days LaVonne Maas and Sandy Penn got gray hairs trying to work out the problems.  Making the eligibility data available to crop insurance companies would be a new challenge.

[Just joking about the gray hairs]