Too Many People in Washington Think You’re An Idiot

Charlie Arlinghaus

August 22, 2012

As originally published in the New Hampshire Union Leader

You’re an idiot. You’re so self-serving and adolescent that you can’t possibly have an adult conversation. That’s the barrage from political professionals. Politicians and their like should carefully avoid talking to us like we’re adults because clearly we aren’t. Anyone attempting to have an adult conversation or be clear about their positions on the issues of the day is supposedly a problem.

Voters, we are led to believe, prefer bland banalities. Rather than a plan or an idea, politicians should say “when I get there, I’m going to roll up my sleeves and get this thing going.” God forbid – or at least political hack forbid – they should let us know they’ve reached a conclusion about what needs to be done or not.

The best example of the cynicism of the political class is the reaction to Paul Ryan. I’ve written before about the angst Ryan causes in the group of adolescents known as political professionals.  Ryan’s last foray into actually explaining what he and many of us believe was greeted with the rolling eyes of belief-free operatives fretting that “Republicans are under the mistaken impression they have to lead.”

You see, in Washington, ideas are the enemy. This explains the debt and budget situation in DC which would be considered insane anywhere outside of DC and Europe.

A recent story in Politico highlighted the hand-wringing trepidation felt “among Republican operatives in Washington.” Many timid people of flexible values move to Washington where they get to try and convince our elected officials to avoid talking if at all possible.

You and I are under the mistaken impression that elections are about ideas. We choose, on the basis of what they believe and what they say they will do, who we want to go temporarily into the cesspool and represent us. What they believe matters. A lot. If they have no idea what they want to do, or no fixed opinion, why would we hire them?

Not every politico is a hand-wringer. Notably, Mary Matalin summed up the point of elections when she disagreed with the jellyfish: “what everyone wanted was a campaign and presidency of purpose with a mandate for reform.” Well said, Mary Matalin.

Elections are not popularity contests. The people running ought to be well versed on the issues of the day, willing to talk about the most important issues they are going to deal with, and effective enough leaders and communicators to explain to us what they’re planning on pursuing.

By the way, the election is not a referendum per se. None of us expects that we will agree with a candidate on every issue or every detail. But we are all capable of behaving like adults. We understand difficult decisions and can have them explained to us even if we don’t agree with every particular.

Our own Sen. Kelly Ayotte has been an example of this recently. In her first two years in Washington, she’s emerged as a crusader on balancing the federal budget. Typically politicians like that end up compromised because budget bills are placed forward with a program here or there for her home state. The Washingtonian thinking is that she can’t possibly explain voting against it to the people at home (remember Washingtonians think we’re idiots) so they’ve boxed her in.

Sen. Ayotte voted against a budget bill that included some prison money for New Hampshire along with billions of other spending proposals. She voted no. people didn’t rise up in arms because any money that might go to NH justifies every other stupid idea. Instead they listened to her and most ended up agreeing.

At the end of the day, voters aren’t stupid. They don’t respond to the most brainless of the attack ads run here and there. After decades of over the top negative ads and negative mail pieces, voters instinctively understand that there is probably more to the story than my political opponent is telling them.

The better political professionals will tell you that negative pieces are most effective when there is more information and some sort of third party validation. Why? Because we’re not stupid and we understand that an opponent may not be telling the whole story.

More than that, after watching Greece and half of Europe on the verge of bankruptcy, we know that the United States isn’t far behind and may have to make some adult decisions to avoid being a basket case. When asked what your plan is, it is never the right answer to say “I don’t know but he’s a jerk.”

The adolescents in Washington don’t understand but the rest of us get it.

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NH sees 25% drop in forclosure filings in July

According to the foreclosure tracking firm RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings fell nearly 25% in July from the June figures. With a total of only 596 properties either being put on the auction block or repossessed by the bank,  this puts total filings under 600 for the first time since December. While a good sign, it should be noted that last year’s June to July time frame also saw a similar drop, followed by a spike in August. It remains to be seen if this year’s drop is part of a yearly trend or a sign of a continued housing recovery.

Statewide, only one in 1,031 properties received a filing notice. The national average for July was one in 686 with California having the highest rate of 1 in 325 and North Dakota the lowest, at one in 105,833.

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Two Proposals on which We All Can Agree

Charlie Arlinghaus

August 8, 2012

As originally published in the New Hampshire Union Leader

Good proposals often founder on the rocks of partisanship. It is a sad truth of current political wars that Republicans are meant to reject Democratic proposals simply because of the party that made them and vice versa. But even in the current supercharged atmosphere, there are quite a few reform proposals that people across the spectrum can support without impairing their ideological credentials.

Marjorie Smith, former Democratic chairwoman of the House Finance Committee, started the ball rolling by agreeing with my suggestion that our bifurcated executive branch with a semi-independent bureaucracy ought to change. You can just imagine some of her colleagues saying “couldn’t you take that position without agreeing with that annoying nit?”

Yet Rep. Smith is capable of seeing past our disagreements (we often have inverse views on the financial affairs of the state) and seeing the chance to build cross-partisan agreement on changes to make a better government for whomever we elect to run it.

If I can, I’d like to suggest two changes that should be agreeable to both parties and the new governor, whether it be Ovide Lamontagne or Jackie Cilley, Maggie Hassan or Kevin Smith.

The new governor will inherit his or her department heads and have the opportunity to change or reappoint only a small minority of them in the first six months in office. Current Gov. John Lynch improved the situation by signing a law four years ago to make commissioners’ terms expire. They used to serve until a replacement was confirmed, allowing governors to hold them over indefinitely or a council to refuse to accept a replacement and thereby keep the old guy.

But it is a small change. We can and should make all commissioners more directly accountable to the chief executive on whom we pass judgment every two years. Typically, Democrats oppose giving a GOP executive more authority, and vice versa, but today is different. The November election will produce a new governor, and neither party is a clear favorite. We can all agree that the person we support should have that authority and begrudgingly admit that even if our candidate loses, the other one should have the same authority.

But how? We can’t have commissioners serve just two years, or no one would take the job. A four-year gubernatorial term is more controversial. What we can do is stagger the terms, but create responsibility by allowing the governor to remove a commissioner for any reason he chooses. I would have all commissioners serve at the pleasure of the governor. But a removal procedure with or without council approval probably creates the right incentives for accountability.

There’s no ideological victory or defeat for either side in such a proposal, so why not join together and do it?

Similarly, both parties have an interest in having the best people able to serve. Yet the Legislature is an impossible chore for most of us. Sessions have gotten longer and longer so that it is now a full-time job and then some for the first six months of each year and a part-time job for the remainder. Fewer and fewer people are able to serve. This is particularly true in the Senate, in which 24 people have to cover the same ground as 400 in the House. It is almost certainly a cause of good people of both parties stepping aside.

No one, I think, would argue that we are better off for having another 1,000 or so prospective bills in the second year of a legislative session. Yet few people want the Legislature absent for the entire second year (not that they’re ever really absent from an oversight role). A solution is a return to biennial sessions.

The Legislature would meet in full, unrestricted session each odd-numbered year, just as today. But the second year would be restricted just as so-called special sessions were in the past. A limited session would be called and limited to specific proposals of some urgency. Under such a scenario, the Legislature wouldn’t cede any authority or privilege but would allow more to serve.

Again, this is a proposal that creates no partisan advantage, nor runs foul of either party’s philosophical underpinnings. It simply allows a better process.

These are but two examples of proposals that won’t displace partisan debate, but that needn’t run afoul of politics either. Others will suggest reorganizing government, streamlining Executive Council oversight, and reforming the structural components of the budget process. Philosophical fights are important to a free government, but so too is realizing that sometimes it’s all right to agree.

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Three Takeaways from the July Unemployment Data

Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly jobs report for July. Suffice it to say, it does not show much of an improvement over the June data. In fact, the unemployment rate increased from 8.2% to 8.3%. While it is only a tenth of a percent increase, it means that all of the marginal improvements made this year have now been completely wiped out. Looking deeper into the data, we see more troubling data:

200,000 fewer people are working:

The loss of 200,000 employed persons is probably the worst news out of the jobs report. While some of that loss could be attributed to end of fiscal year retirements, looking at historical data, the June to July data does not show any recurring trend. In years of economic weakness, the June to July number falls and in good economic years, the number rises. Thus economic conditions as a whole are the driving force in this numbers, rather than retirements. Had retirements been the driving force, the data would have shown a consistent decline in the June to July figures.

That being said, the fact of the matter remains that there are 200,000 fewer people working in July than there were in June. No matter the reason in which those jobs were lost, be it layoffs or retirements, the problem is that those jobs were not filled.

Workforce Participation Rate Drops to 63.8%:

The workforce participation rate measures the number of people who are either looking for, or have a job. While measured as both a rate and in terms of individuals, the participation rate has fallen over the past few years to rates not seen since the early 1980s. While a small portion of this was expected due to the first wave of baby boomer retirements, the extent and sharpness of the decline is directly attributable to the recent economic turmoil. The drop in the workforce participation rate from June to July represents 150,000 people no longer employed or seeking work. Given the corresponding increases in the U-4 and U-6 unemployment figures, most, though not all, dropped out of the workforce due to economic reasons.

U-4 and U-6 also increased.

In simple terms, the U-4 and U-6 unemployment rates are different classifications of unemployment, with progressively wider definitions of what it means to be ‘unemployed.’ When you’ve heard on the news that the current unemployment rate isn’t the ‘real’ unemployment rate, these rates are usually the measurements they are referring to. While it makes sense that these rates would increase along with the official unemployment rate, the fact that they do, shows that the problem of large numbers discouraged workers is continuing, not getting any better. The U-4 rate is now 8.8% and the U-6 is 15.0%

For a more detailed discussion of the alternative means of measuring unemployment, click here

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U-3 or U-6? Federal Unemployment Rates Explained

Joshua Elliott-Traficante

August 2012

The first Friday of every month, the Department of Labor releases its monthly jobs report. The figure usually reported in the media as the ‘unemployment rate’ is actually just one of six different classifications of unemployment that the Department uses. These are numbered U-1 through U-6 and as the numbers go up, the wider the definition of unemployment. The most common reported by the media and considered the official unemployment rate is referred to as the U-3 rate.

How Rates are Calculated:

Unemployment is almost always reported in terms of percentage rates. In calculating the rates, there are two numbers that are used: The numerator, being the number of people who fit the definition of unemployment for that classification and the denominator, which is the size of the total potential workforce. Divide the two, and the result is the unemployment rate for that classification. Complicating matters is the fact that there are three different potential workforce populations used in the rates. U-1, U-2 and U-3 all use the same potential workforce number, U-4 has one all to its own, with U-5 and U-6 sharing one between them. Because the higher classifications count individuals who are no longer considered part of the workforce, when calculating those rates, those individuals must be added into the total potential workforce as well.

The Classifications:

U-1: This is the narrowest definition of unemployment, counting only those who are unemployed for 15 weeks or longer.

U-2: A slightly wider definition, including those who would be counted as U-1, plus all of those who have lost their jobs involuntarily and those who have completed temporary jobs. A recent example of a temporary job would be someone who took a job as a census taker for the 2010 Census, knowing that once it was completed, their employment with the Census Bureau would be terminated.

U-3: This is considered the official unemployment rate by the Department of Labor and the one most often cited in the media. This rate includes all those who are unemployed and are seeking employment as well as those classified as U-1 and U-2.

U-4: This rate is U-3 plus those workers who are considered ‘discouraged workers.’ In laymen’s terms, these are individuals who are unemployed but not looking for employment only because they think there are no jobs available and to look would be in vain.

U-5: This rate is U-4 plus those workers who are marginally attached to the labor force. Essentially it includes people who are unemployed and not looking for work for any reason, market related or not.

U-6: This rate is U-5 plus all those who are working part-time due to the poor jobs market, but who want and are available to work full time. An example would be a recent college graduate working part-time as a waiter to get by, but would like to work full time in his or her chosen field.

The Decoupling

Before the recent economic downturn, few people discussed any rate other than the official unemployment rate, the U-3. However, the nature of the last recession, as well as the lack-luster recovery has given rise to a debate concerning U-3’s preeminence. Some have argued that given the current economic climate, the U-6 rate is actually a more accurate representation of the state of unemployment.

For the past 18 years, the difference between the U-3 rate and the U-6 rate ranged between 3 and 4.5 percentage points. Since early 2009 however, at which time the recession had been underway for more than a year, the spread rapidly ballooned to 7 percentage points and has remained at or just below that for the last 3 ½ years, unprecedented since the tracking of the U-6 rate began.[1]

This decoupling of rates spurred recent debate of using the U-6 rate over the U-3 rate. The U-6 rate counts the people who have simply given up looking for a job, due to the poor state of the economy and those who have taken part-time work but would otherwise want to be employed full time. People who fall into these categories are not counted under the official unemployment rate.

With a slower than normal recovery, we are seeing an atypical surge of those two groups of workers counted in the U-6 data, but this trend, while critically important when trying to assess the state of unemployment in the country is not represented in the official U-3 rate.

Those who argue for using the U-6 rate point to this fact specifically as the reason to use it over the U-3 rate. This is not to say that the U-3 rate is inaccurate, but its definition of unemployment is too narrow for the current economic climate, failing to capture those two groups of people, whose ranks have swelled rapidly due to an abnormally slow recovery.

As of June 2012 the spread between the two rates was 6.7 points, but trending upward. While it is impossible to say for certain, but it stands to reason that the vast majority of the roughly 3 percentage point overhang from the normal rates can be directly attributed to the tepid recovery.

A New Official Unemployment Rate? Tempting, but Short Sighted

As noted earlier, generally the U-3 and U-6 rates have stayed within a range of 3 to 4.5 percentage points, the 7+ gap as of late is an entirely new phenomenon. It is true, that while the U-3 rate has been a good measure in the past, economic conditions of late have resulted in the official unemployment rate partially masked the true extent of unemployment in the US.

At this point, it seems short sighted to abandon our current measure of unemployment, with the understanding that the current decoupling of the wider definitions of unemployment with the official rate is a fluke.

Should the current state of economic malaise become the ‘new normal’ as some have suggested, changing the designated official unemployment rate would be worth some serious consideration, although stretching to the U-6 would be a bit far. If the goal is to include people who have given up looking for work purely due to economic considerations, then the U-4 rate is worth a look. Like the U-6, it moves in tandem with U-3, albeit at a much closer statistical distance, usually in the neighborhood of .25 percentage points. As of June 2012 it was double that, .5 percentage points, putting the U-4 rate at 8.7%.

 

[1] Spread calculated by author from data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab15.htm

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Annoy the Candidates, Ask them Questions

Charlie Arlinghaus

July 25, 2012

As originally published in the New Hampshire Union Leader

Candidates are supposed to avoid being specific during elections. They are regularly told by the bulk of the consulting corps that telling people what you might or might not do as governor only makes people mad, costs you votes and limits your options once you get elected.

Pledges and specific proposals are troublesome and should be avoided at all costs. Instead of telling us what you plan to do, discuss the problem, share your concerns for the future and say quite forcefully that we need to work together to find a solution. Message: You care.

This is a great plan for the politician who seeks popularity and adulation. If your goal is to be likeable and liked, specifics are not your friend. If your goal is to lead the state and build support for solution-oriented proposals, you might want to be specific during a campaign, lay out concrete proposals and provide details about your preferred solution.

Specifics will keep you from achieving 80 and 90 percent approval ratings. Lack of specifics will keep you from achieving much if you do manage to get elected. In addition to everything else, policy is boring and requires a lot of studying and reading numbers.

So candidates go forward in an election talking in vague generalities about the importance of jobs, bringing people together, fighting for a stronger economy, hot dogs and apple pie — unless, of course, you prefer lemon meringue.

Voters are in a unique position during the election cycle. Candidates desperately need us. They cross the state seeking handfuls of us to speak with and are forced to take questions from anyone who happens to show up about anything they want to ask about.

After the election, they are surrounded by lobbyists, agency heads and people who have time to spend at the State House during the middle of a work day. But during the election phase, we can force them to commit to us on specific issues, answer questions in public about where they stand on every issue and get them to rule in or rule out approaches to the problems of the day.

This is particularly important. Many a candidate in history (although no one running this year I should hasten to add) has told one group he’s in favor of something and another group he’s opposed to, or at least given each diametrically-opposed group the impression he’s sympathetic to them. Only when forced to publicly declare a position is one group then surprised.

The next Legislature will deal with a host of issues large and small, none of which is new to any candidate. I want to know where everyone stands in some detail.

The state’s pension system is among the worst funded in the country. Everyone is planning on doing something, but what specifically? Will you support a defined contribution or insist that defined benefits be required? What specific changes would you make if elected, how would that affect the cost to taxpayers at every level, and would those changes actually stop liabilities from growing much faster than the assets we have to pay those liabilities?

Taxes are always an issue in New Hampshire. Part of candidate transparency is the pledge. At this point, every politician knows where he or she stands on an income tax — yes or no? How about other taxes? The economy is still uncertain, will increasing other taxes be part of your budget or not? You know enough today to tell us that.

The Tax Foundation finds our business taxes the highest in the country. Will you lower them over time? How much? What will that cost and how would you pay for it?

I’m not revealing any secrets when I tell you that the last budget was the most significant cut in modern history. Will you preserve those cuts? If you intend to add some spending back, what areas would you increase first, and how would you pay for that increase?

Are current government structures appropriate? Would you give the governor greater control over the executive branch? How do you feel about biennial sessions for legislators to allow more people to serve?

Would you support an education funding amendment? Will you restructure state aid to education? Will you support or try to repeal the school choice plan enacted last year?

There are dozens of other issues. You should ask each candidate his or her opinion on each of them. The more we know, the fewer surprises we have. Political consultants want them to tell us less. We should demand more.

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June sees slight uptick in foreclosure filings in New Hampshire

According to RealtyTrac, a foreclosure tracking firm, foreclosure filings in New Hampshire, for the month of June saw a slight uptick versus the previous month. May saw 704 filings, while June had 789.

Just under 60% of these filings were concentrated in Hillsborough and Rockingham Counties.

The state as a whole saw one in 789 households received a foreclosure filing in June, better than the national average of one in 666.

California saw the most filings in both real and relative terms, nearly 48,000 filings, meaning one in 288 California households received one.

In terms of what happened to the homes receiving filings in June, roughly half reverted to bank ownership, with the other half ending up on the auction block.

 

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Three Takeaways from the June Unemployment Figures

The US Department of Labor released its June unemployment report, which showed the country added 80,000 new jobs, while the unemployment rate remained the same at 8.2%.

Often times that is the only figure the news media will report, however there is a treasure trove of data the the Department of Labor releases at  the same time that paints a far more detailed picture of the labor force than just the unemployment rate does.

Below are three points that I’ve picked out that I think say something important about the economy as a whole. Rather than showing signs of economic expansion, these data points show a lackluster recovery, with more than a few showing negative trends:

1) U-6 Unemployment Rate Increases from 14.8% to 14.9%

As a refresher, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has a number of metrics that they measure unemployment by, numbered U-1 through U-6. As the number goes up, the classification has a wider definition.  The most common one heard on the news, and considered the “Official Unemployment Rate” is referred to as the U-3 rate.

The U-6 rate however, includes everyone considered under the U-3 rate, “plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force and all persons marginally attached to the labor force.” In layman’s terms, it includes everyone who would like a full time job, but either only works part time, or have dropped out of the labor force entirely for lack of work.

While an increase of a tenth of a percent U-6 unemployment rate may seem small, unfortunately it is part of an upward trend. This unemployment metric is not near it’s high of 17% in April of 2010, it has gone up every single month for the past four months, which is cause for concern. While last month’s increase could conceivably be attributed to the increase in the labor force participation rate, there is no obvious reason for the uptick other than a tepid recovery.

2) African Americans and Hispanics see Unemployment Rolls Grow by Half a Million Since April.

This recession has hit African Americans and Hispanics disproportionally hard in comparison to Whites and Asians. Rather than getting better, the unemployment data shows that it is getting worst for these already hard hit groups. African American unemployment rate has increase from 13.0% in April to 14.4% in June. Of that increase, .6% was in May with an additional .8% in June, meaning a whopping 1.4% increase. Granted using a smaller population size means that small changes can look larger statistically, but an increase this large can not be dismissed. That increase accounts for nearly 300,000 additional people being unemployed.

Hispanics did do better comparatively, but still saw an increase of .7% since April, seeing rates jump for 10.3% to 11.0%. This increase translates to nearly 200,000 more unemployed workers.

3) College Aged Workers Unemployment Rates Trending Upward

College aged workers, being those aged 20-25 have seen much higher unemployment rates of around 13%. Unfortunately June data shows a remarkable spike over the May data, with the rate increasing from 12.9% to 13.7%, rolling back any gains made to February. I am sure many of you are thinking what I thought when I saw the jump and thought “That must have something to do with the school year ending in May for college students.” A reasonable assumption to make, but an incorrect one. Based on the data doing back for the past 60+ years, there is no trend of a May to June bump, effectively disproving that thesis.

Looking at the year to date figures for this age group, when broken out between the two genders, we see men disproportionally hit and experiencing a slower recovery. June 2012 had unemployment rates of 15.4% for men and 11.8% for women while June 2011 saw 15.6% and 13.3% respectively. While the lack of equal improvement is noteworthy, a gap in rates between men and women is consistent with the data for the past 25 years although the spread tends to be between 1 and two points, not 3.6.

Lastly an update to the takeaways from the May report not covered above:

1) Labor Force Participation Rate Holds Steady at 63.8%

The fact that this rate did not go up indicates there are still a decent number of people who have left the workforce but do not think economic conditions are good enough yet to rejoin. While the lack of a decline means more people haven’t become discouraged and left the workforce, the lack of an increase means the situation isn’t getting any better.

2) Mixed Data on Long Term Unemployment

Those unemployed for more than 27 weeks saw a drop from 42.8% to 41.9% of all those unemployed. While this is an encouraging trend, those unemployed for 15-27 weeks saw an increase from 13.1% to 14.1% of the total.

 

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End New Hampshire’s Archaic Government Structure

 Charlie Arlinghaus

July 4, 2012

As originally published in the New Hampshire Union Leader

 New Hampshire’s state government contains a design flaw intended to make the governing bureaucracy somewhat independent of the elected chief executive and ensure that the state’s CEO has only limited authority over his department heads. As we prepare to transition to a new chief executive next year, there are steps government can and should take to make the new governor more accountable and effective.

In other states the Governor is elected to manage the operation of state government.  He or she is the chief executive of the state, appoints department heads or commissioners as assistants to carry out the various functions of state government. Voters elect a governor to lead the government and run the state. New Hampshire is different.

The Executive Branch in New Hampshire is divided into two very distinct pieces.  The elected Governor has a small office and staff.  Rather than appointing his cabinet upon taking over the office, department heads are appointed for fixed terms that are completely unrelated to elections. A governor inherits the senior management staff of the executive branch and has no ability to remove them.  Their terms of office quite often last longer than the governor’s term. If a senior official’s term happens to expire during the Governor’s tenure, the governor has the opportunity to appoint a new person or reappoint the commissioner. If it doesn’t happen to expire, he’s stuck with that person and can’t remove him or her except for malfeasance.

The biggest problem with this system is that it reduces responsiveness to the people and makes a managerial model of government nearly impossible. New Hampshire elects her governor every two years to keep him or her as accountable as possible. Yet the governor is not given the authority to carry out the vision he placed before the voters by appointing key lieutenants or changing key members of the senior leadership.

Governor Lynch has been in place for almost eight years at this point but in his first six months in office, he had the opportunity to appoint or re-appoint only 5 of the eighteen department heads. For example, the largest department was headed by John Stephen, appointed by Lynch’s predecessor, publicly at odds with the governor, but who didn’t leave until well into the governor’s second term.

The situation was not unique to Governor Lynch. His predecessor, Craig Benson, had the opportunity to appoint or re-appoint only 6 of the 18 department heads. During her first six months in office, Jeanne Shaheen was able to appoint only seven of the eighteen; Steve Merrill four of eighteen and Judd Gregg five of the eighteen.

Both Gregg’s and Merrill’s numbers include two commissioners whose offices were changed to serve at the pleasure of the Governor. That sensible change made during the significant modernization in the Sununu administration was later reversed. Of the 16 more or less comparable positions that existed before his modernization efforts, John Sununu was able to appoint only 1 in his first six months.

Going forward, both the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor have cause for concern. Only 3 of the 18 department heads will be open during the first six months of the new governor’s term. Six of the new CEO’s department heads are locked in stone and don’t expire during the governor’s term at all including huge areas like Health and human Services, Safety, Transportation and Administrative Services.

The effect of the current management structure is to create a semi-autonomous bureaucracy independent of the elected executive. A good personality can manage by persuasion or antagonism but the underlying structure creates problems. A few years ago one commissioner was criticized by his department for sharing too much information with the Governor’s office – a concept inconceivable to any management theory. Famously, one governor twenty years ago demanded his transportation commissioner’s resignation. The commissioner is said to have replied “I don’t work for you” and ignored the request.

The independence creates a dynamic in which a governor elected by the voters to run government a certain way has only limited authority over the management over the enterprise he’s been hired to run. His or her deputies, department heads, “vice presidents,” don’t work for the chief executive but have an independence that leads to the reluctance to share information referenced above.

As a start, policymakers should not make any appointments between now and the new governor taking office, at least in the major departments of government. Next, the structure of government needs to be changed to both give the elected CEO the authority to run the government and us the ability to hold him or her accountable for performance.

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New Hampshire Home Foreclosure Filings Fall Slightly for May

According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings for the month of May fell slightly over the April figures. May saw 704 filings, while March had 727.

Hillsborough and Rockingham Counties accounted for just over half of the filings, which makes sense given the concentration of the state’s population in the Southern Tier.

New Hampshire as a whole saw 1 foreclosure filing for every 873 households. Sullivan and Belknap Counties saw the worst ratios of 1 in 677 and 1 in 692 respectively. However, in real terms, number of homes receiving a filing notice in these two counties combined was only 87.

For comparison the national average for May was 1 filing for every 639 households. Problematic states such as California, Nevada and Florida saw rates of roughly 1 filing for every 310 households, twice the national rate and just shy of three times the rate here in New Hampshire.

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