Chip Taylor

Bureacratic growth

From the Washington Post:

The federal government is top-heavy with more layers of high-ranking bureaucrats than ever before, impeding the flow of information within agencies and clouding the accountability of the officials who run them, according to a study to be released today.

The study, conducted for the Brookings Institution by government scholar Paul C. Light, found that the number of federal executive titles swelled to 64 this year. That's up from 51 in 1998, 33 in 1992 and 17 in 1960.

...

Light and his research assistants combed the Federal Yellow Book, a directory of more than 40,000 executive branch officials. They took inventory of top managerial jobs in the 15 Cabinet departments, counting only titles that link directly to the Senate-confirmed positions of secretary, deputy secretary, undersecretary, assistant secretary and administrator.

Comparing the results with previous studies, they charted the birth and proliferation of such titles as deputy associate deputy secretary, deputy associate assistant secretary and principal deputy deputy assistant secretary. The jobs were held by political appointees and career executives.

I wonder. What's the difference between a deputy associate deputy secretary and a deputy associate assistant secretary? Shouldn't there be a vice neutron in there somewhere?

Part of this growth can be attributed to "see one; want one."

One of the more notable growth professions was that of chief of staff to a Cabinet secretary. The first such post was created in 1981 at the Department of Health and Human Services. It spread to 10 more departments over the next decade and now exists at every Cabinet agency except Defense.

"People just end up believing from a power and perquisite standpoint that you've got to have a chief of staff if you are to be seen as a credible player," Light said.

In some cases, even the deputy secretary has a chief of staff.