For a guy who's been feeding at the public trough since he landed his first job, Governor Engler has a perverted perception of public service. Instead of trying to strengthen state government he is, very effectively, dismantling it.
Budget cuts and hiring freezes of the past and present have left state agencies in shambles, unable to deliver basic and needed services. The Department of Natural Resources has been among the hardest hit, putting conservation in reverse.
Now comes Engler's new retirement incentive package. It allows senior state employees to retire early with better benefits than they would collect if they worked many more years. Some say they, simply, cannot afford not to take advantage of it.
Engler's motive, of course, is to garnish his national reputation as a government buster. A richly deserved reputation. But hardly a responsible chief executive's challenge. A governor should be making government work. Not dismantling it so that it cannot work, to gloss his image.
Let's look at the DNR's wildlife division. It has gone from 284 employees to 173. If those eligible take retirement, thirty-four (about twenty percent) will go. Only twenty-five percent, or eight, can be replaced.
Wildlife biologists and technicians are now so sparsely deployed they can give logging and other critical habitat projects only cursory review. When told to write an Environmental Impact Statement on the impacts of development of Antrim gas fields, they had time to produce only a simplistic, generic document. The same holds with their input into state forest long range plans.
How about fisheries? Of 209 workers, fifty-nine (twenty-eight percent) are eligible to retire. Only fifteen can be replaced.
Like their wildlife counterparts, fisheries personnel are so sparse vast expanses of the resource is written off. In districts that have more water than most states, there are only two biologists. After retirements, there may be only one per district.
Fisheries opportunities that would electrify some nations have to be ignored. With reduced monitoring capability, fisheries are now allowed to decay. For example, a hatchery may be closed, and the Great Lakes Creel Census, one of the most essential tools that managers of Great Lakes fisheries have, is being shelved.
Not because the money isn't there. With the recent hunting and fishing license fee hikes, the dollars are there to improve wildlife and fisheries management and protection. But the additional money can't be spent, due to Engler's "hiring freeze-early retirement" double whammy.
The forestry division's prospects are even bleaker. It could lose twenty-two percent of its staff. Operating with already severely reduced ranks, foresters and technicians can no longer maintain the pace of logging demanded by Engler and the legislature. They have to farm it out, losing much of their control and quality.
Nineteen field forest managers may leave for early retirement. Only five can be replaced, tightening the timber industry's grip on our state forests.
The division's fire fighting roster will be further decimated. Already short forty-one critically needed people, and publicly on record as being too hobbled to protect the state's forests and surrounding public property, it will be a "burn, baby, burn" spring in the north woods if fire conditions are extreme.
That's good government? No. It is government, John Engler style. RWOL
The above editorial first appeared in The North Woods Call. It is used here with permission. Wildlife and natural resources are being sacrificed in this state to preserve Engler's image. Advocates of government downsizing and privatization of natural resources should now know the truth of the old axiom: be careful what you wish for, you may get it, and more. With Governor Engler, you've got it in spades.
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