I have worked very closely with several city departments over the last 10 years, so while I am not a city employee, I am very familiar with how 4 different departments there are run.
The problem is not the union, although it doesn't help. The problem isn't the overwhelming number of slackers, either, because to be honest, in the departments I've worked with, there are some pretty smart people that take their job pretty seriously.
The problem is the fact that there's no incentive to be efficient. As such, there is so much redundancy built into these departments that you could probably gut half of the managers in the city and you would still be able to produce nearly as much work. It's truly painful to watch, and I would go bat-sh*t crazy if I tried to do my job inside that framework.
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