Paul Light, a professor at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, has written about government performance for 25 years. His new book, “A Government Ill Executed,” analyzes what he calls a crisis in government performance. He talked with former managing editor Florence Olsen about his book, the writings of Alexander Hamilton and a package of reforms that includes hiring 100,000 frontline federal workers.
FCW: What is it about “The Federalist Papers” that made you choose them as a model for your critique of government operations today? LIGHT: Alexander Hamilton, more than any of the founders, gave a great deal of thought to how government would work. He developed a set of principles that he pursued once in office as the first secretary of the Treasury. Some of those principles have worked out well and are still relevant today, and others have had unintended consequences.
Hamilton believed in something called execution in detail. He set tight rules governing the Coast Guard [known in 1790 as the Revenue Cutter Service], custom houses and so forth, and for a tiny government at the time, that made a lot of sense. He demanded regular reports from the front lines of government about the implementation of the laws. For example, he wanted to make sure that all Coast Guard cutters carried a certain number of cannonballs.
Of course, over time the layers of rules have become quite stifling, which is one of the unintended consequences of Hamilton’s notions. But he did believe in an energetic federal service. He thought that federal employees were essential to the faithful execution of the laws, and that is still absolutely true. We really don’t treat federal employees as if they are essential. We talk about employees as essential on snow days. Hamilton would be offended by that notion, I think, because Hamilton believed that every federal employee would be essential.
FCW: How confident are you that replacing retiring baby boomers with more frontline employees could reform federal operations? LIGHT: It’s part of a package of reforms. I don’t think the specific proposals will work in isolation. My view is that we ought to take the baby boomer jobs as they are exited and decide where we want to put them.
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