Next governor: LePage's ideas, but with social skills

Gov. Paul LePage does not like middle management. Me either.

When I was working, management was never punished or held accountable for its errors, stupidity or outright mismanagement. This is the direct result of the state being unwilling to allow a contract with such provisions.

I could be disciplined by an evil (yes, evil), or wacky manager, but no amount of effort by the union was ever able to deter or even slow down the manager's behavior. Too many people were promoted because they were always supportive of their supervisors and would never question any orders.

I took an informal survey once at work and found that about one-third of the staff was on medication or counseling to deal with stress. Perhaps it is unfortunate that employees require a union, but when management does not respect their employees, the union is our only defense. The vast majority of state workers I encountered in my 26 years did their best in spite of management rather than because of management.

Is our state and federal government inefficient and too large? You bet. Is that the workers fault? No.

The other "old guys" at my morning coffee place are tired of hearing me say: "Make me emperor of all the known world and I will fix most of our problems in a couple of weeks." But truthfully, many of the problems could easily be solved if our elected officials were patriots instead of "domestic party terrorists."

I hope our next governor has many of LePage's ideas but also the social skills to allow his or her ideas to actually be heard.

Peter Swartz

Farmingdale

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