Staffing and
This chapter is all about getting a government job! Tell your students that, and they should sit up and take notice. The best way to generate interest in these topics is to show the impact they have on the student's life. Those students who have visions of public service should be told that most public employment is at the state and local level. Federal civil service employment has been frozen for more than twenty years, so as a percentage of the work force, it has dropped. State and local employment, in contrast, has grown, not as fast since 1990 as in the two preceding decades, but still it has grown. Merit systems have spread, so that nearly all professional career jobs are covered. Pay scales have improved substantially and, as federal pay has only crept up, state and local starting salaries often match or surpass federal pay.
Even those students not interested in government employment are eventually going to be footing the tax bill (and will foot even more as they get older). What are they getting for their money? Does the rise of public employee unions assure a higher quality of public service? Or are these unions protecting entrenched, plodding civil servants? As active taxpayers, all students should be interested in the rising tax burden at the state and local level. They need to know what types of taxes are used, the characteristics of each, and the impact that each tax source has on various segments of society.
Obviously, this does not have to be a dull set of topics. They bear directly on the fundamental political questions of who governs (who will hold public jobs) and for what purpose will they govern (how much money will be generated, how, and who pays). Who wins and who loss are basic political questions, and they are basic to this chapter.
I. LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Describe how merit systems and civil service commissions operate at the state and local level.
2. Contrast the major principles of the merit and the collective bargaining personnel systems.
3. Discuss the reasons for the growth in public unionization and the problems presented by their presence.
4. Analyze reasons for the growth of privatization, and arguments for and against this development.
5. Examine the impact on state and local government of rising citizen demands for services and decreasing federal funding.
6. Indicate the provisions of the U.S. Constitution that structure state taxation decisions.
7. Describe how the property tax is administered.
8. Analyze the controversies surrounding the property tax, especially in the area of school finance.
9. Analyze the connections between the property tax and the tax revolt with the passage of
10. Explain the ways that states use sales taxes, income taxes, special excise taxes, and severance taxes.
11. Explain how lotteries and legalized gambling are a source of revenue for state and
Local government.
12. Discuss how user fees and grants are sources of nontaxrevenue.
13. Explain the use of borrowing as a source of state and local revenue.
14. Identify the three "R's" that recently shocked state and local government and explain how state governments have responded to deal with revenue shortages.