DOB: A Challenge for All Times (and Mayors)
An article in The Times this weekend looks at the mayor’s record at cleaning up corruption and incompetence at the Buildings Department and largely finds it wanting; but the paper also notes that no other mayor has had much luck in that department either. The problem, as the article frames it, is an inherent one…
An article in The Times this weekend looks at the mayor’s record at cleaning up corruption and incompetence at the Buildings Department and largely finds it wanting; but the paper also notes that no other mayor has had much luck in that department either. The problem, as the article frames it, is an inherent one when you have low-paid bureaucrats with quite a bit of power and discretion charged with policing an industry that’s making money hand-over-fist. When you pay people who have the responsibility as inspectors so little, they’re prone to having their hand out, said Daniel J. Castleman, a former chief assistant in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and current managing director at FTI Consulting. That’s not endemic to one mayor or a dozen mayors, that’s just the way it is. There’s so much money to be made in construction and development that people are going to offer you things and people who are paid less are going to think, ‘Who’s this going to hurt?’ The answer, as the numerous crane and building collapses in recent years show, is a lot of people.
Buildings Dept. Woes Have Persisted Despite Bloomberg’s Overhaul [NY Times]
Photo by Jon Meyer
bklyn20, as long as architects/engineers are HONEST, then the self-cert system works just fine. its not flawed.
Aren’t a lot of the problems at the DOB related to the flawed system of self-certification by architects? I don’t deny that there are have been problems with the DOB system in general. Still and all, hasn’t allowing people (architects/developers) to certify their own work during a building boom caused a virulent case of self-interest in many? (Apologies in advance to the many architects, designers, etc. reading this blog.) This is not my area of expertise, but I thought it was worth pointing out.
Miss Breukelen — This would require revenue! And when home owners in Brownstone Brooklyn are only paying a 0.15% property tax rate on their multi-million dollar homes… I’m not sure where you want to get the revenue.
“…This makes NO sense at all from a Human Resources or any other job perspective. When people leave to chase $ elsewhere, they take the knowledge with them;…”
Posted by: BrookLynn at November 2, 2009 1:02 PM
Aren’t all jobs like this. Instead of employers paying their employees what is fair & just to live in NYC, they don’t. They turn the other cheek. I’m pretty sure the people responsible for budget & payroll for the City knows someone can’t live on $47k/yr. Come on. Then the City (like every other employer) wants their employees to go over & beyond at their job; but, how can you when you can’t even make ends meet? Wouldn’t you feel resentment? The City (and every other employer) needs to wake-up.
You want someone to do their job efficiently and productively provide them with monetary incentives to make their jobs worth it.
I agree with g_man. I have worked for NYC government for the past 4 years. All these City postings have very wide salary ranges, but honestly, I don’t know why they bother. Very few, if any employees seem to get anything beyond the minimum. I don’t think that’s for lack of negotiating, it’s just the way business is done. Lots of people stay in their positions and don’t get more than the union raise.
It’s often said that if you want to make more money, you have to leave your agency. A fair number of people just hop around the agencies or leave city service for short periods of time and come back to their same job title at a higher salary. This makes NO sense at all from a Human Resources or any other job perspective. When people leave to chase $ elsewhere, they take the knowledge with them; then the agency has to advertise the position, interview replacements, train the replacement, etc. This is all a waste of time and money! It also leads to the loss of some really talented people and reduces morale amongst those who remain. Getting rid of the residency requirement was a step in the right direction. I’m not advocating that people do unethical things to make up the difference in salary, but it’s kind of sad that many of the people who serve the City are forced into its outskirts, or NJ. Serving the City shouldn’t be “just a job”. Maybe if people felt like more of a part of it, they would be inclined to take their work more seriously…instead of thinking “well, what do I care? I live in NJ” or something similar.
With that said, there needs to be a zero tolerance policy for employees who are caught engaging in this kind of behavior. I don’t know if it exists, but maybe an informant hotline where people can report instances of inspectors looking the other way?
Sorry g_man… are you DC-37? As far as unions in this city are concerned, they sort of suck. 🙂 My union, which also wants me to vote for this Thompson fella, has gotten a much better deal from the state and city than my DC-37 colleagues.
That being said, I believe I get paid what i should for my job… but looking at NJ for housing has always been in the back of my mind. If I worked in Manhattan, I’m sure I’d already be living in Jersey City or Hoboken. (I’m a state employee, so city residency isn’t required.)
This is not “the way it is” everywhere in the US. New York (and a few other areas) appear to be more corrupt than most.
i understand what this article intends to say, but it’s kind of bs. the problem isn’t “inherent,” otherwise why does any enforcement system whose enforcers make much less than the enforcees work any better than the DOB (and, as i understand it, it’s accepted fact that the DOB is much more broken than the rest of these kinds of systems)?
tybur, thanks. I didn’t get the memo and will look at apartments in Jersey on my day off tomorrow … after I vote for Thompson, of course.
You concede my point that the “average” is less than you assume in your first point but ultimately prove that you are working from real data. Look at that attrition! I guess that most of the people in the higher salaries are supervisors of some sort, and not just guys who have hung in there for 20 years.