Much Good Is Done By Government Workers

This was originally published as an exclusive to McClatchy-Tribune Information Service.

Anti-government sentiment has been prevalent across the country, fueled in part by the acrimonious health-care debate, anger over the Wall Street and auto industry bailouts, anxiety over high unemployment rates, and worry over increased spending and ballooning budget deficits.

These feelings of distrust and resentment, seen in public opinion polls, vocal town hall meetings this past summer and during various demonstrations, have been stoked by provocative television and radio commentators, bloggers, and by some politicians who seem to take pleasure caricaturing public servants as faceless, uncaring "bureaucrats." Lost amid the emotion and the inflammatory rhetoric is what our government and its dedicated public servants accomplish every day -- the delivery of vital services and the creation of innovative programs to deal with some of the nation's most serious and seemingly intractable problems.

There are countess success stories of unheralded federal workers making a big difference in the lives of Americans.

Take the issue of veteran's care. Janet Kemp, a dedicated public servant in Canandaigua, N.Y., created the Department of Veterans Affairs' first-ever national suicide prevention hotline. The 24-hour, seven-day- a-week service has handled more than 160,000 calls in the last two years and helped rescue more than 5,000 callers from suicidal situations.

In one case, a soldier deployed in Iraq put a gun to his head and threatened suicide while talking to his mother during an online video chat. The mother called the hotline, the staff contacted his unit, and she watched as authorities saved her son's life.

Don Burke and Sean P. Dennehy, both CIA analysts at the agency's headquarters in Virginia, worked tirelessly to break down cultural barriers that have prevented information sharing across our nation's 16 intelligence agencies. They built Intellipedia, a Wikipedia- like clearinghouse of intelligence expertise that now has more than 900,000 pages and 100,000 users.

Analysts have used Intellipedia to examine potential threats to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, to argue about potential perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and to create a protocol for documenting cases of improvised explosive devices in Iraq.

Thomas Waldmann has spent five decades working on behalf of the American people at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., making cutting- edge discoveries that have led to significant advances in the treatment of cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis.

At the Naval Medical Research Center in Silver Spring. Md., microbiologist Patricia Guerry spent years creating a promising Campylobacter vaccine to prevent the world's top cause of food-borne intestinal illness, while at the Justice Department in Washington attorney Walter Benjamin Fisherow has presided more than 16 legal settlements with coal-fired power plants that led to the removal of 2 million tons per year of harmful pollutants from the air.

Michael German of the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Atlanta office has also been working to help the nation, tirelessly building a successful program that brings an array of community partners together to attack and deal with the root causes of chronic homelessness in cities around the nation.

There certainly is a legitimate debate about the size, the role, the spending and the effectiveness of our government, and there is no doubt that federal workers can improve their performance and that government should be held to a high standard.

Recent public opinion polls show that only about 23 percent of the public trusts government to do what is right, not a historic low but certainly a sad commentary and well below the 44 percent in 2000, and the 60 percent in the 1970s who felt government was on their side.

But it is important to keep in mind that collectively it is our government and that the people of our government are engaged day-in and day-out seeking to protect our health, safety and welfare of the nation.

It is easy to fall back on old stereotypes that often are reinforced in the media, where a 2008 Gallup poll found that 57 percent of the public believed the news coverage about government was negative.

Attacking government may make some people feel good, improve media ratings or provide some short-term political gain, but it is shortsighted, ignores the positive accomplishments that take place every day, and in the end, demeans us all.

Stier is president and CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service.

 

Comments

[valboski]

It is time for government workers to get 401K's or Ira's instead of pensions. They are unaffordable and need to see what it's like to live like the "little people".

[doubter421]

Or , you Americans could try to improve things for each other, instead of screwing each other out of sheer bitterness. No one should be without a good pension, or a good paycheck for that matter. They are affordable, you just need to keep a few fat bastards from hogging all the pie and leaving nothing for everyone else.

[bkca]

You obviously know nothing about federal and state employee pensions. Studies show that when benefits and pensions are added in, government workers make an average of twice as much as a worker in a comperable job in the private sector. In California, out of control public employee pensions are bankrupting the state. You see, the workers, by law, are guaranteed a generous return on their pension fund. And, if the stock market takes a hit, and the fund loses money, guess who takes the hit? That's right..... the taxpayer. And there are pensions funds now that are looking at being hundreds of billions of dollars in the hole. And for what? So some fat slob in a cubicle can get a better retirement than a US marine? The pensions are single handedly bankrupting the United States, and any politician pretending otherwise is not to be taken seriously.

[rabrophy]

There are many good, dedicated people in Government service, but often it is the system that is disfunctional. The department of Veterans Affairs is a fine example. It's an insane bureaucratic maze filled with bazaar twists and turns leading back on itself.

Here in Minneapolis where I live you have a 6 week wait to see a Doctor if your lucky. Then you a forced to except treatment from newly mined interns and medical students. If you need surgery it will most likely be done by student Doctors from the U of Minnesota. If you ask for a Bord Certified Specialist you told there are none.

Every Administration loves to wave the flag and get their pictures taken with Veterans but once in office they forget us.