The messages managers send to public employees

The messages managers to send public employees

It is encouraging to hear that the Western Reserve Port Authority is receiving expressions of interest in the new job of job economic-development director from candidates of high quality.

If one were to believe the former director of aviation, few people would be interested in working for an entity that would question a departing employee’s entitlement to $10,000 in accumulated vacation and sick time.

The port authority is also searching for a replacement for Steve Bowser, who resigned as director of aviation in late July after taking a better job as the second in command at Palm Springs International Airport. No one begrudges Bowser for taking a better, higher paying job. And no one questions that Bowser did good work during his six years at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport. It was his attempt to grab $10,000 on his way out the door for what he claimed as accumulated vacation and sick time that rankles.

Blurring the lines

Somewhere along the line, management employees in the public sector have come to think of themselves as managers for purposes of pay and power, but line workers for purposes of hours and benefits. The other day, an entry in the Years Ago column reported that Youngstown Mayor Pat Ungaro had to point out to department heads in 1984 that they weren’t entitled to compensatory time off just because they had to attend council meetings from time to time. We suppose he should have just been happy that the department heads attended; a few years ago, Girard had a police chief who simply refused to be bothered about attending council meetings.

The point is that some public employees (and those paid with public funds through quasi-public agencies), are quick to adopt an attitude of entitlement. It’s galling to the public when seen in the lower ranks. It promotes institutional dysfunction when it comes from the top.

Bowser was airport manager for six years and apparently rarely if ever took a day off. That’s commendable. But as a manager Bowser should have recognized that if he didn’t use the time he was entitled to take, he would lose it. Instead he gave the port authority a bill for $10,000. When the authority offered him $1,000, Bowser told a reporter that the board’s reaction sent “a bad message” to the airport’s current employees and whoever might be hired to replace him.

We’d suggest that it wasn’t the board that sent the bad message.

Another example

Also this summer, Boardman saw the resignation of its police chief, Patrick Berarducci, after about 21‚Ñ2 years on the job. Berarducci also found a better job, which is fine. But he too couldn’t bear to leave 13 vacation days on the table as he left. When the township declined to pay him $5,170 for those days and he wasn’t able to get approval from Medina City Council to carry over those days to his new job, he simply delayed changing jobs for more than two weeks until he managed to use up all the days.

Was he entitled to do so? Yes. But if a new employee told a private employer that he was going to report for work Aug. 3, and then called to say, on second thought, “I won’t be at work till Aug. 22 because my old boss won’t buy out my vacation time,” the employee would be running the risk of having no job.

We are sometimes accused of bashing public employees. But it is not bashing to point out the evolving differences between the workplace realities of public and private employment — in this case, management.

And, unlike Bowser, we’d see the message that the port authority is sending by rejecting his claim for a $10,000 good-bye gift as a good one.