City Defining Qualifications Down for Its Agency Heads; Degrees, Licenses Devalued
By BRANDON WARD
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the smartest of them all — Mayor Bloomberg for proposing legislation that the qualifications requirement for the Department of Buildings Commissioner be relaxed to allow the city to hire individuals to head the agency who are not licensed Architects or Engineers, or the City Council for approving/passing this legislation?

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang UNDERGOING RENOVATIONS: Mayor Bloomberg signs several bills Sept. 3, including one that would reduce professional requirements for the Buildings Commissioner. The Mayor was supposed to swear in the new Commissioner, Robert LiMandri, who cancelled at the last minute for personal reasons.

Whatever your answer, the harsh reality is, engineering leadership is once again being compromised on the altar of political expediency by the Mayor and cowardly capitulation by members of the City Council.

Education, Schmeducation

Voltaire stated that "the art of government consists in taking as much money [you can also say power and leadership] as possible from one party of the citizens to give to others." In city government, this can be easily referred to as the BS shuffle: replacing licensed professional Engineers and Architects with BS (and I mean Bachelor of Science) degrees with entrepreneurial "managers." In this connection, I mean the agency improvers.

Let's face it: just as being an NFL quarterback looks easy to a plumber, some in the Department of Transportation would have us believe that bridge engineering is easy for a Highway Repairer. As scandalous as that may sound, the fact is, beginning in 1999, an erstwhile Highway Repairer was deemed qualified to "manage" an engineering-based and decision-driven division.

Worse still, without irony or shame, this management arrangement was endorsed not once but twice by the agency's Chief Engineer, who has taken his BS to a whole new funk by stating it's his managerial right to make such appointments. Mind you, these "managers" earn six-figure salaries without the educational merit of a college degree. Meanwhile, we are encouraged to believe that a good education and hard work are necessary instruments of career mobility.

Against this backdrop, I am outraged by what has seemingly become the adopted attitude of our politicians with regard to the qualification standards for leadership of government agencies. I must confess that one of the many enduring problems I have with such executive decisions is that it explicitly conveys the anti-intellectual impulses of some agency heads. Disturbingly, to the prescient observer, the fruits of this leadership mindset have resulted in logical empiricism being offered as expertise, and simplistic arguments, simple solutions and simple answers are offered as reasoned judgment.

Dumbing Down the Populace

According to the recently-published book "Just How Stupid Are We?" by historian Rick Shenkman, three out of 10 Americans don't know what the Holocaust is, and a far greater percentage of Americans can name more members of The Simpsons family than they can enumerate the freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment. To put it mildly, some of our political leaders are mesmerized by the smarter government/management prattle of the "thinking outside the box" crowd by allowing their cognitive intelligence to take a back seat to their emotional intelligence.

Here's an example of what I mean. During the Democratic presidential primary contest, Senator Hillary Clinton was asked by the late Tim Russert, "Can you produce one economist to support the gas tax holiday?" She said that's elitist thinking. Curiously, this response equated intelligence or being informed as "elitist." First off, to even think that a reputable economist has nothing intelligent to say about whether a gas tax will give people economic relief is wack. Secondly, it's like saying don't ask a musician about music or engineers about engineering.

Unfortunately, in Bloomberg-land, some have also come to the happy conclusion that managerial skills, not engineering expertise, are the greatest virtue for the commissioner of DOB. Fundamentally, this is anti-pragmatic thinking. In fact, I have concluded that such anti-pragmatic pragmatism reflects an elitism and professional exceptionalism (the other e-factor). By this I mean the idea that a "manager" is different from every other city professional and can manage outside of his or her sphere of professional expertise.

Redefining Experience

So why did our leaders change their minds about the whole "experience" thing? Arguably, even the three blind mice can see race plays a role in changing folks' minds on how experience is evaluated. After all, on one hand, we are supposed to be scared by the very thought that a skinny guy with a funny name is positioned to pick up the phone at 3 a.m. On the other hand, a woman who may have never traveled abroad and may have met John McCain (the Republican presidential candidate) just once or twice is given the nod ( deemed qualified) to be his VP choice.

I must confess that I was optimistic that our non-politician businessman turned Mayor was going to use the gravitas of his political independence and a most remarkable political achievement — winning half of the black vote and a third of the Hispanic votes — to bring about a change that we could believe in. Unfortunately, that's not the case in the area of racial diversity in the hierarchy of most city agencies.

According to a recent Village Voice article titled, "Want to Work for Mike Bloomberg — What's Your Batting Average?" the writer, Wayne Barrett, points out that in the Department of Business Services (DBS) there were more blacks in the top decision-making posts under Rudy Giuliani than currently exist today under Mayor Bloomberg. In fact, as recent as 2001, blacks were the leadership-majority in the agency. However, under the leadership of the current Commissioner, Robert Walsh, the agency is now packed at the top with young white Ivy Leaguers in the primary stages of their corporate careers.

Drew Blanks on Numbers

Making this perversion even worse is the fact that after serving more than six years as the commissioner, Mr. Walsh and his first deputy, Andrew Schwartz, could not answer any of the questions during their interview by the Voice about minority apprentices, jobs or work sites during their interview. Mind you, this is the agency and commissioner responsible for the city's Minority and Women Business Enterprise program.

It is both sad and funny to hear the Mayor extol the virtues of hiring and appointing the best and the brightest to leadership in his administration; however, while being a graduate of an elite college is noble, it is not synonymous with being the best and brightest. Case in point: President George W. Bush.

Unfortunately, the meaning of elite has been compromised to the point that it no longer means the best. Politically speaking, the connotation implies stuffy, superior, arrogant and most importantly, not one of us. It is sad but true; "us" is still a euphemism for white in some circles even when you are qualified.

Brandon L. Ward is president of the New York City Municipal Chapter of Blacks in Government, an employee advocacy group. He is a Mechanical Engineer with the Department of Transportation. He can be reached at brandonward@nycbig.com.