Louisiana Voice

Posted in Civil Service, Notable Quotables | 1 Comment

One Response

1. on October 8, 2011 at 9:55 am | Reply Alexis Holstead Thompson

   Linda F. is not “Alexis Thompson” in disguise — she is exactly who she said she was, a former co-worker. And she certainly is no fool!! She has access to the same information that was provided to Mr. Aswell and just wanted to ensure the public was being provided accurate facts.

   I am the real Alexis Thompson and I am capable of speaking for myself. There appears to be two points Mr. Aswell was trying to make in this article (1) that retire/rehires should not be allowed because of the additional financial strain on state government and (2) in order to make the first point, it was acceptable to use inaccurate or to misrepresent information for the purpose of depicting myself and my husband, Julian “Bud” Thompson (Mr. Aswell’s former employer) as unsavory persons who do not care about the state’s best interest.

   The purpose of these comments is only to address the first issue because there is a much better mechanism to handle the second one.

   It is easy for any person to sit back and expound how things should be done. Where it gets much harder is when you are assigned the responsibility of actually having to direct or operate programs. In that regard, the one item that hasn’t been addressed yet, which I feel must be, is there are few options available to management of state departments and universities faced with continuing to provide vital services to the citizens while positions are being cut from their budget without the elimination of entire programs, something that the Chief Executive and Legislature of this state have not seemed willing to do.

   Because I understand the difficulty in meeting such a challenge, I agreed to provide assistance on a special project when Treasury contacted me in March 2011. The reason I was approached is that management believed my expertise would ensure the project could be completed quickly at a minimum cost to the state since Treasury had no available staff to complete it. This special project involved the restructuring of the Office of Statewide Depository Control to provide for continuing operations with less staff, an evaluation of job levels at the State Bond Commission, and the development of a process for implementing work procedure updates. In fact when the project was initially discussed with me, the primary goal identified was for me to achieve a reduction in the number of positions.

   After thoroughly analyzing all existing jobs, I was able to remove a whole tier of supervision and reduce the number of positions by rearranging duties between the other positions. And I managed to accomplish that without eliminating any filled position or causing any employee to be laid off. To complete the project, I had to rewrite all job descriptions, revise job specifications and evaluate pay levels before submitting an entire job study packet to Civil Service Commission for approval.

   I worked approximately 28 – 32 hrs per week for 22.5 weeks during a 6 ½ month period to complete the necessary work that permanently reduced the number of positions at Treasury. During the period I was working on the special project, vacant positions in Treasury were left unfilled, which means there was no INCREASE in overall salary costs for the department.

   The job study was approved by Civil Service Commission on September 7, subsequently approved by the Governor and became effective on Tuesday, October 4. If you know anything about state government, you will realize that was a rather remarkable task to accomplish in less than 7 months of working part-time. So I did my job well and I am proud of that work product. The only regret that I have is that in completing the project, I have been misrepresented to the public by Mr. Aswell as another “retire/rehire” who returned to do the same job. While that trend may occur elsewhere in state government, it is something I would never agree to do.

   I have held many management positions while working 35 years in state government. Each and every time before I moved to another position or into retirement, my staff was fully prepared and did not need me to return to complete assignments or provide training. My philosophy has always been I would have accomplished nothing if the work could not continue once I was gone. And I have absolutely no desire to ever jump back on the monthly “Bond Commission” treadmill even if the bait was a much higher salary.

   I totally get the concept of “walking the talk” and that is what I did while working at Treasury. Hard to believe that can be classified as “rank hypocrisy”!!!

   The morals of this story are: (1) not everything is what it appears to be on first glance and (2) a person cannot simply classify one option (retire/rehire) as being wrong without considering the specifics of each particular situation. And the bottom line is … management of each state department must utilize available options to provide the most efficient service at the least possible cost in the best interest of the taxpayers of Louisiana.