Deregulating the Public Service: Can Government Be Improved?

• Author: Norstrem, Gary

Reviewed by Gary Norstrem, senior vice president of Piper Capital Management at Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and former president of the GFOA Executive Board.

During the past many years, we have heard and read many ideological alternatives to improve or reform government that can be applied at the federal, state and local level. Some of these theories have been tested and proven to be substantially successful. This book addresses one of these theories. The book was written by 12 authors, each writing a chapter and offering different perspectives, but all generally drawing the same conclusion: deregulation of the public service must play a significant part in order to progress in improved government administration.

The Brookings Institution and John J. DiIulio, Jr., have selected a diverse group of authors who write in an easy-to-read style. In the introduction, it is stated that "this volume represents a first-rate effort to educate the public about the need to improve government administration and the difficulty of doing so." In addition, I would suggest that the audience that should read this volume carefully consists of those who can be most effective in implementing deregulation, i.e., elected officials, public employee union leaders and mid-to high-level public employee staff.

The first chapter provides an overview of government regulation and a descriptive view of what deregulation is, emphasizing that the problems exist at all levels of government: federal, state and local. Issues discussed include restrictive personnel, job and procurement regulations.

The second chapter identifies the sources of public service overregulation, beginning with the evolution of the civil service system then progressing through time covering legislative micromanagement, administrative laws, judicial rule making and public-sector unionism. The following chapter asks if the bureaucracy can be deregulated and discusses a number of constraints, disciplines and attempts at deregulation. Chapter 4 is a discussion of ethics in government. Public trust in government by public officials is necessary to turning things around.

Past reform efforts at the federal level have been somewhat successful. Chapter 5 describes experiments at the Naval Ocean Systems Center in San Diego and the Naval Weapons Center and China Lake in the Mojave Desert. Although these projects seem to be successful, the...