Valuing Public Service: The unsung work of Great Lakes Protection

(Creative Commons Image: Environment Protection Authority Victoria, for illustrative purposes only)

I recently learned from a friend how a U.S. postal delivery worker helped save someone’s life. The mail carrier had noticed that mail was piling up and called for a wellness check. They discovered the resident had experienced a catastrophic fall and hadn’t been able to call for help for several days. Once rescued, emergency services whisked him away to a hospital for treatment. Now this isn’t what a mail carrier gets paid to do, but this decent human went beyond the job description to make sure someone on their regular route was OK. Mail delivery on its own is a valuable public service, but serving society is part of the fabric and ethos of civil service.

Many of us are unaware of the vast network of public servants who keep things in the world around us humming, but as we witness drastic cutbacks in that service, more are paying attention. After a week of intense storms, there’s increased realization that in the United States, we have fewer experts working at the National Weather Service. I don’t know about you, but here in a region with plenty of thunderstorms and increasingly widespread tornado events, I’d feel better with more weather expertise than less. Drastic cuts in U.S. federal agency staffing and budgets are undermining public services we largely take for granted, and slashing federal grants and funding for states is shrinking their capacities as well.

Across the region, dozens of federal, state, and provincial agencies support services that protect our health, safety, and well-being, and that of the region’s environment. Right now, someone on a government payroll may be monitoring your drinking water to make sure it is safe to drink, or investigating why those delectable whitefish are declining in Lake Michigan, or assessing the likelihood of another toxic algal bloom in Lake Erie this summer. They might be enforcing fish and game regulations, preparing campgrounds for the thousands who will flood them this summer, studying shoreline erosion, working on plans to protect trout stream headwaters, or taking on thousands of other tasks that keep the waters and places we depend on healthy. This is not waste or fraud. This is not bloated government. This is practical, necessary work that needs to be done for the welfare of the public and the environment.

Very few people get rich working for a public agency. In the United States, pay is typically far less than in the private sector. (Canada reportedly offers better compensation.) People certainly don’t take these jobs for the glamour. Yet the public has high expectations for government services and is ready to complain when things don’t meet our standards. We want our tap water to be clean and healthy every time we turn on the faucet, and we want emergency services and pothole-free streets. We want sparkling shorelines and good fishing and clean restrooms at the national park, and so much more. While I believe there is a kind of magic in the world, magic is not what makes these things happen, and they don’t happen for free.

Civil service is not a perfect system, and every workforce (public or private) probably has some less than stellar employees. I’ll be honest and say there have been a few agency staff where I’ve been tempted to count the days until their retirement. However, over the course of my career I’ve been repeatedly impressed by the dedication and skills of people working in the many agencies that deal with the environment. I’ve had the pleasure to work with so many who take their assignments and their sense of duty to the public very seriously. I’ve seen them put in the long hours, and take the public heat on work from PCB clean-up to invasive species prevention to habitat restoration and countless other valued services. Imagine expecting a private sector consultant to bid on a job where they will be paid at the pre-determined government rate and yelled at for three hours in a public meeting just for trying to do their  job.

Civil service also fosters institutional memory and builds professional skills, which is important for continuity on grappling with long-term problems and understanding the unique needs of specific constituencies, or the nuances of particular challenges. High turnover in public agencies due to low pay or political pressure can result in irreversible losses of public investment in leadership and expertise.

A few years ago, my friend and poet, Kenneth Durham Smith, wrote this poem, reminding me that we never know who the essential heroes might be who are collectively holding the world we know together.

The Random Civil Servant

Jewish tradition says that the continued existence of the world depends upon the tzadikim nistarim, the hidden 36 righteous people, each of whom does not know that she or he is one of the 36.

Dressed in the standard issue grey suit,

umbrella still present under the arm,

but because times do change, hatless,

our civil servant slips through the crowds,

largely unnoticed, but not unfelt,

as eddies of what can only be called

kindness trail in our civil servant’s wake,

and those in the eddies find themselves

being nice to each other,

one small effect of being one of the thirty-six.

Our civil servant does not, cannot, know.

Those who are hidden in plain sight

are hidden even from themselves,

and a life that seemed modest to itself

nevertheless carries the world.

But what if the thirty-six were not fixed,

that anyone can be, has been, will be,

for just a moment, one of the thirty-six,

that you this moment carry the world,

your random act of kindness is a stone

plonked into the still clear waters,

the ripples crossing to the horizon,

and you will never know how far they go.

Kenneth Durham Smith, copyright 2020

More of Ken's poetry can be found here - https://poetrypostriposte.substack.com/

(Creative Commons Image: Environment Protection Authority Victoria, for illustrative purposes only)

—Jane Elder

GLEN welcomes diverse perspectives on Great Lakes protection. Please note that the views in our posts are those of the author. To learn more about GLEN please visit our website at https://www.greatlakesecoregion.org/.