Tucked into Sioux Falls mayor Paul TenHaken’s 545.3-million-dollar budget is $124,000 to create a new “chief culture officer.”
Conservative cranks might worry that’s some new post to promote multiculturalism and Muslim prayers… but it’s worse, far worse! It’s sheer government redundancy! Mayor TenHaken is trying to create his own human resources exec, operating under his thumb from his office, to replicate the functions that the existing city human resources department ought to be handling.
The city’s former human resources director, Jennifer Holsen, takes to Facebook (as reprinted on South DaCola) to critique the latest expression of “conservative” TenHaken’s government bloat and point out that her human resources department took action long before TenHaken’s ascent to address the recruitment needs of city government:
My department, under my leadership, monitored employee recruitment and retention. With forecasted retirement and turnover data, the directors were constantly informed of retention issues and were tasked, along with our direction and leadership, with putting together comprehensive training and leadership development action plans to deal with the so-called “silver tsunami” which, by the way, is not some new phenomenon just discovered by Mayor TenHaken. We identified it well over a decade ago.
Myself and other selected directors attended a national succession planning conference and came back to Sioux Falls ready to put plans in place to deal with this issue.
As directors, we worked together to identify people within our organization who had either been identified as having the potential and skills necessary to move into leadership and managerial positions, irrespective of their home department. We totally revamped the recruitment, testing and hiring practices for police and fire where the “silver Tsunami “ was a clear and present danger.
…ts totally inappropriate and and actually rather arrogant of the Mayor to propose a Chief Cultural Officer in his office. If the position is actually needed in the organization, it belongs under the direct supervision and oversight of the Director of Human Resources. That department has all the tools and information to administer programs that cultivate the next generation of leaders at City Hall [Jennifer Holsen, reprinted in Scott Ehrisman, “Former HR Director for the City of Sioux Falls Responds on FB to Mayor’s Proposal for Cultural Officer,” South DaCola, 2019.09.16].
Once again, TenHaken demonstrates that South Dakota Republicans don’t really want smaller government. They want more government filled with more puppets whose strings they can pull.
Conservative cranks? Conservative robbers is more like it. While we slept, there will be another $75 Billion of taxpayer money put forth for the banks. We might remember 2008 and the little issue we had then.
“The Federal Reserve took action to calm money markets, injecting billions in cash to quell a surge in short-term rates that was pushing up its policy benchmark rate and threatening to drive up borrowing costs for companies and consumers. The central bank also said it’s willing to spend another $75 billion Wednesday.
While the spike wasn’t evidence of any sort of imminent financial crisis, it highlighted how the Fed was losing control over short-term lending, one of its key tools for implementing monetary policy. It also indicated Wall Street is struggling to absorb record sales of Treasury debt to fund a swelling U.S. budget deficit. What’s more, many dealers have curtailed trading because of safeguards implemented after the 2008 crisis, making these markets more prone to volatility.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-17/new-york-fed-announces-operation-to-ease-money-market-rates
This adds to the $35 Billion already injected a short time ago. When do you think presidential candidates will have to go back to Washington to fix the Chubby trump recession? First thing to do, dump Chubby hump, the sooner the better.
Time to hire some pretty people!
I’d be a pretty good culture officer.
My good friend Bob would make a great culture officer.
I would make a terrible culture officer because it sounds superfluous and silly, while I’m very practical and I think silly things are fine for kids but not for our effin elected officials.