Lori Sturdevant: Will young people shun government work?

Say you're a bright college student who wants a career that makes a difference.

You've thought about teaching or social work that helps the poor. You're also interested in protecting the environment and promoting sustainable agriculture and renewable energy.

But those interests tend to lead to careers in government.

And right now, government work doesn't look so hot.

That was already true before Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker turned the Capitol end of Madison's State Street into a protest zone by proposing to strip most public-employee unions of their bargaining rights.

So reported a nationally acclaimed public-sector scholar, Paul C. Light, in his 2008 book "A Government Ill Executed."

Light, a professor at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service, is a former associate dean of the newly renamed Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

"Young people are quite interested now in public service. But this has to scare them off," Light said of the angry clashes between public employees and Walker's defenders. "This is creating a climate of anger and denigration of government work."

Light has spent a prolific career diagnosing what ails government -- why, for example, terrorists go undetected, tainted foods get past inspectors, borders are porous, flood walls break and student achievement trend lines go the wrong way.

One of his findings: Government jobs have not been attracting the best and brightest young Americans.

That needs to change, pronto.

Baby boomer workers will soon leave government employ in big numbers. Government can't improve unless well-qualified, well-motivated young people take their places.

"Young people will just walk away if they don't feel they'll be appreciated and respected in the work they choose. They don't need to be loved every day, but they don't want to be demonized."

The clash in Madison isn't all that has Light fretting about the future of government employment. The threat of a federal government shutdown if more spending isn't authorized before March 4 is also on his mind.

"My students are saying, 'Do I really want to work for an organization that treats its employees that way?'"

Those aren't the words of an apologist for government work as Americans know it.

To the contrary: Light sees a lot wrong with the way public work is done in this country. He's been a voice for changes that address what he says is the real problem.

The bigger flaw, he said, lies with duplicative, top-heavy, politically driven bureaucracies that don't sufficiently encourage productivity and reward performance.

"The issue isn't bargaining rights," Light said. "It's whether government operations are right-sized and constructed to do the job well."

He faults Wisconsin's Walker for misdiagnosing the problem and the Democratic legislators now exiled in Illinois for an inept response. Instead of running and just saying no, Light said, Democrats should be offering their own public employment reform plan.

His recommendations apply well beyond Wisconsin: Bureaucracies should be flattened to drive more resources to front-line workers and shrink the number of political appointees in middle management.

Some jurisdictions, agencies and functions should be consolidated; unsuccessful programs should be scrapped.

In short, the productivity improvements that many large private businesses engineered in the past decade should come now to government.

With the impending retirement of boomers from government ranks, the next few years present a rare opportunity to improve government performance by bringing new young talent into leaner, flatter, nimbler operations.

It's that opportunity -- not the chance to bust politically nettlesome unions -- that ought to be in state politicians' sights.