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It’s easy to pile on

Few young people in politics aspire to be a sanitation district board member, but there is huge money (your user fees and tax dollars) in sewage and we really can’t afford to ignore these types of agencies.

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, our local version of Sen. Tom McClintock, has had some stern words for the Orange County Sanitation District regarding that agencies hiring of a new age management consulting firm.

An email today from Assemblyman DeVore explains:

"This is a follow-up to a story you may remember from last July when I first wrote about the Orange County Sanitation District’s (OCSD) $180,000 per year consulting contract with a yoga priest (“Holy Sewage!” in Human Events July 15, 2005), then two weeks later when I reported that the $117.8 million sewer treatment agency fired Dharma Consulting after being embarrassed by the revelations of the questionable spending. 

On October 22, the Los Angeles Times ran a story entitled, “O.C. Sewage Unit: No Place to Breathe Deep” in which it detailed OCSD’s general manager Blake Anderson resignation “…after coming under fire for spending about $400,000 on a spiritual-based consulting firm to improve working relations at the agency.”

The Times piece prominently mentioned my critique of the expensive spiritual consulting contract in which they quoted from that editorial I wrote for Human Events in July.  Quoting from the paper now:

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine) also weighed in by writing an editorial entitled "Holy Sewage" for the national conservative news magazine Human Events.

"What if a local government decided to bring in a representative of a nearby Catholic diocese to help coach their city employees on spirituality, teamwork and ethics?" DeVore wrote. "Now, imagine if that government entity signed a yearly contract with the diocese for $180,000 per year. The ACLU would sue more quickly than you could say, ‘Establishment Clause.’ "


I wish the directors of the OCSD the best of luck as they seek a new general manager while trying to wisely spend over $117 million per year in taxpayer money.

As FR publisher Jon Fleischman opined earlier on this blog.  DeVore has a great point and I don’t (in the broad sense) disagree with his assessment, especially over the issue of the potential of injecting religion into the public agency work-place. 

But, its important that we look at local agencies, especially ones with budgets in the hundreds of millions like the OC Sanitation District and recognize that the general manager is effectively the CEO of a small-cap NASDAQ-traded-sized company.  And that  these types of organizations, in order to run smoothly and stay competitive for recruiting purposes and operationally, they might, just might, need to rely on the same tools corporate America uses to do the same in the business world.

So the next time your local water board spends $10,000 on a team-building retreat for management, feel free to write an OpEd filled with outrage, but remember, it isn’t such a crazy idea.

Note: I am not now, nor have I ever been affiliated with a management consulting firm that does business with government agencies.  But at $180,000 a year for a part-time gig, I would certainly consider it.  Feel free to email me.