University of Miami Florida Service First Reform by Floridas State GOVT Discussion Based on your assigned position, suggest why “Florida First” is a useful

University of Miami Florida Service First Reform by Floridas State GOVT Discussion Based on your assigned position, suggest why “Florida First” is a useful or not-so-useful initiative (300 words).

Moloney, K. (2018q). attached

Florida’s HR Reforms: Service First, Service Worst, or Something in Between?
Public Personnel Management, 39(1), 15–38.Crowell, E., & Guy, M. (2010).
Civil Service Reform in Florida State Government
Review of Public Personnel Administration, 23(4), 286–304.Bowman, J. S., Gertz, M. G., Gertz, S. C., & Williams, R. L. (2003).
Jeb Bush: Strip Feds of Automatic Pay Raises and Due Process
Government Executive, July 20, 2015.Katz, E. (2015). Case Study:
“Florida First” Reforms
Florida’s “Service First”:
A Short History
•The Florida “Service First” reforms followed both Texas and Georgia in
encourage at-will employment.
•These Florida reforms did not go as far with this idea as Texas and Georgia,
but the Florida reforms are often put in the same basket as the other two
states.
•Career Service System was created in Florida for its state employees in
1967.
•Increasingly, however, politicians had come to view the Career Service
System as part of the “problem of government” in Florida.
• As noted by Crowell & Guy (2010, p. 16), the then-Chairman of the Florida
Council of 100 suggested that “one of the primary reasons for the public’s
mistrust lies in the antiquated and cumbersome personnel system for most of
Florida state employees called Career Service”.
• Or FL State Representative Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Miami) stating that the Career
Service System had become a “dinosaur”.
Florida’s “Service First”:
A short history
The Career Service System was viewed as…
•Limiting productivity
•Outdated
•Hiring and firing were too difficult
•Persons retained due to seniority and not skill or productivity
•Employee performance does not separate good employees from bad employees
•Insufficiently entrepreneurial with limited ability to problem solve.
Counter perspective…
•Florida was 47th in nation in ratio of employees to population
•Cost to taxpayers of state civil servant was $33 per taxpayer per year, lower than
any other state in 1999.
Florida’s “Service First”:
A short history
Florida’s “Service First” objective: Reform State of Florida government
and transform civil service into an “at-will” employment.
? Then-Governor Jeb Bush wanted to “make every state employee – “at will”
– subject to being hired and fired as easily as a waitress in a Tallahassee
waffle shop” (Walters, 2003)
? In his inaugural speech as Governor, Bush stated:
“There will be no greater tribute to our maturity as a society than if we can make these
buildings around us empty of workers; as silent monuments to the time when
government played a larger role than it deserved or could adequately fill” (1999).
Reality
• Florida’s human resource function was outsourced to Convergys,
in Florida’s largest privatization ever. Intended start date was May
2003 with a completion set for January 2004.
• But the project was flawed from the start. Drawing on the State
Auditor General’s report (2005-047 of October 2004), problems
were immediate.
• On the right and bottom, the text is from “Shady Deals in the
Sunshine State: The Florida Model of Privatization” by the
American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees
• This was just one of over 140 privatization contracts undertaken
under Bush.
Text from AFSCME (n.d.) Shady Deals in the Sunshine State: The Florida Model of Privatization”, Washington DC: AFSCME via https://www.afscme.org/newspublications/publications/privatization/pdf/shady.pdf
Reality
Interview (Crowell & Guy, 2008) Results:
•Recruitment and Selection: Employment application sent to the company,
hiring done not by the agency but the company, hiring justification data is
no longer required to be retained, can hire with ease and with limited
qualifications.
•Broadbanding: “Service First” “reduced more than 4,500 worker
classifications categories to 280. Pay bands were reduced from 475 to 25”
– on its own this reduction was okay but it also meant that starting salaries
of new workers were lower than before.
•Patronage Hiring: Mixed views from respondent on whether or not this
had increased or decreased
•Employee Morale: Seniority no longer matters, low morale, fear of talking
about the reforms as doing so might cost one’s job.
Reality
•“Service First” was to make
government smaller. Gov.
Bush wanted to reduce
public workforce by 25% in
five years (Bowman, et al,
2003)
•“Service First” announced in
March 2001 “State of the
State” address in Florida.
•But did it? In its first few
years, (a) the state reduced
its state employees but
increased its contractors,
and (b) the budget
increased, not decreased
(see on right, Crowell & Guy,
2010, p. 27).
Updates?
On the election of Governor Scott, he wanted to reduce the state workforce by 5
percent.
? Data: In 2009, Florida “had the lowest ratio among the 50 states of full-time and part-time
state employees to overall population, the second-lowest ratio of full-time equivalent
employees to population” (Shockman, 2010) and in 2009, Florida also had “lowest payroll
expenditures per resident” of $38 compared to a national average of $72/resident.
? Note: “A word of caution about both figures: Florida, because of its large population, has a
comparative advantage using these types of calculation when compared with states with
smaller populations. Those states still have to provide most or all of the public services that
Florida does, but just for fewer people. Delaware and North Dakota, for instance, both have
nearly three times as many state employees per resident when compared with Florida, and
spend three times more on payroll per resident.” (Shockman, 2010)
On the election of Governor Scott, he wanted to reduce the state workforce by 5
percent.
? Data: Budgeted workforce in 2010: 167,797.
? Data: State Personnel System Employees – those directly working for the government:
109,020
? Data: State workforce is bigger in 2010 than in 2006.
? Source: Shockman, 2010.
References
AFSCME (n.d.) Shady Deals in the Sunshine State: The Florida Model of
Privatization”, Washington DC: AFSCME via https://www.afscme.org/newspublications/publications/privatization/pdf/shady.pdf
Bowman, J. S. (2002). At-will employment in Florida government: A naked
formula to corrupt public service. Working USA, 6(2), 90.
Crowell, E. B., & Guy, M. E. (2010). Florida’s HR Reforms: Service First,
Service Worst, or Something in Between?. Public Personnel Management,
39(1), 15-38.
Shockman, A. (2010). Democratic senator says state already cutting jobs,
cites study. Tampa Bay: PolitiFact Florida via
http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2010/dec/10/billmontford/democrat-senator-says-state-already-cutting-jobs-c/
Walters, J. (2003, May). Civil Service Tsunami. Governing.
http://www.governing.com/templates/gov_print_article?id=105912323

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