The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: Budget Battle Book

The Rules of Bureaucracy

Rule #O: "The Rules of Bureaucracy are mutable, non-canonical, non-ordinal, and contradictory, except in the cases where they are not."
Rule #1: "Document everything you do; if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen."
Rule #2 [The Sixty Minutes Rule]: "Never do anything that would cause Ed Bradley, Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Steve Croft, Leslie Stahl, or even Andy Rooney to persue you down a hallway with a camera crew."
Rule #3: "Nothing Simple is Ever Easy"
Rule #4: "It's about the money; follow the money."
Rule #5: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Rule #6: "Politics is the enemy of good government."
Rule #7: "The biggest detriment to public service is the public."
Rule #8: "The second biggest detriment to public service is the service."
Rule #9: "There's a reason; there's ALWAYS a reason."
Rule #10: "The Law is a harsh mistress: The rigorous and exacting application of which can benefit of society when used correctly to advance good policy and block bad, and be the bane of society when used incorrectly to advance bad policy and block good."
Rule #11: "Public service often involves waking up in the morning, opening up the newspaper, and discovering that someone, somewhere out there thinks that you're a dickhead."
Rule #12: "No one really knows what you do."
Rule #13 [Luke's Rule]: "No one ever acts like the bastard they really are."
Rule #14: "Bureaucracy endures."
Rule #15: "The longer you work in bureaucracy, the more Catch-22 resembles non-fiction."
Rule #16: "Politicians are not smarter than you."
Rule #18: "Money is not created equal."
Rule #19: "Mediocrity is normalcy."
Rule #17: "Within any bureaucratic structure, resources (e.g. people, money, knowledge, etc.) are not distributed uniformly."
Rule #20: "Don't assume a fiduciary liability without a committed resource allocation."
Rule #21: "If you do your job and obey the law, they can't reasonably fire you."
Rule #22: "The Budget will always be wrong."
Rule #23: "Always sign in blue."
Rule #24: "A Bureaucrat must be able to explain and justify his/her actions to laymen without resorting to the phrase 'because the Rules say so.'"
Rule #25: "Never voluntarily relinquish control of an original document."
Rule #26: "Sometimes you just have to say 'Screw the rules'"
Rule #27: "Change sucks."
Rule #28: "Sometimes the answer is 'No.'"
Rule #29: "It is very easy to make difficult decisions when no one has a clue what's going on."
Rule #30: "If you hang around long enough, eventually you will become an expert in something."
Rule #31: "Data, technology, and automatic processes can never completely supplant human interaction."
Rule #32: "Cover thine own ass."
Rule #33: "It's not real until it has its own acronym."
Rule #34:There is nothing more dangerous than an elected, resourceful idiot.
Rule #35: It will always take longer than expected.
Rule #36: Coming Soon...

Monday, November 14, 2011

Budget Battle Book

If you were forced against your will to City Council chambers today*, you will have heard the mayor's annual budget address. As always, the Mayor promised to invest more capital dollars into the various Pittsburgh neighborhoods, which has become sort of an annual right of fall to be forgotten about by the Spring... sort of like NBC's primetime lineup.

If I recall correctly, there was a significant amount of money set aside in the previous year's budget for capital improvements, all of which eventually failed to materialize. The Mayor's Office said they really needed that money for some really important stuff, while Council sat around in stunned silence like it was left with the bill at a fancy restaurant. In any case, the Mayor totally promises this time to divvy out the money to the neighborhoods and pinky swears that he has no current plants to yank the money at the last minute again.

And you wonder why the last three Mayors have campaigned on a platform to "invest more in the neighborhoods."

Anyway, there's a couple of more line items in the budget that people are glossing over, but are important to note:

* Removing the Doug Shields smell from Council Chambers - $5,000
* Lottery tickets - $10,000
* Inflatable bouncy castle - $4,000
* Three threatening looking guys with bats to stand outside of the PWSA offices - $15,000
* Hair gel - $7,500
* 311 Staff Person - $0
* Zober Wrangler - $55,000
* Three even more threatening looking guys with bats to stand outside of the Parking Authority offices - $40,000
* Ick-Ray Itzgerald-Fay Estruction-Day Und-Fay - $100,000
* Walrus Repair (Northside) - $33,000
* Pothole Repair - $7.34
* Mt. Washington Based Space Laser - $200,000,000
* Levitating Tables - $5,000
* New old funk smell for Department of Finance's Office - $15,000
* Cello - $300

Once again, the West End gets totally stiffed for much needed Walrus repair. Typical.

No word on when the Council President will issue her shadow budget for the Northside.

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*Don't laugh. It's happened to me before.

The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat

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Monday, November 14, 2011

Budget Battle Book

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