Please read the full article in the Dallas Morning News for factual details. Please join with me here though by reading between the lines.
"We used this to gauge where the employee's morale was, what issues they were seeing in the department, and what good things were happening as well." - Assistant City Manager Jill Jordan, as quoted by the Dallas Morning News.
Let me save the City of Dallas and Ms. Jordan any further effort. There is no lie in the quotation, but it makes a convenient bucket into which the truth of the matter can be poured and then carried to city hall sub-sub-sub level for storage and future use.
There is a whole lot more going on here than the Dallas Morning News has an interest in revealing and which Ms. Jordan would very much like to bury until she finds a willing or unwilling accomplice she can reward or intimidate in the political hatchet jobs yet to come.
Some background is in order here.
I used to be a relatively big fish in the small pond formed from the overflow of funds coming out of the Storm Water Quality Section retention basin fill by the "rain water"of funds flowing into the cesspool of the Engineering Division used as a retention basin for overflow from the waste-water treatment ocean otherwise known as the Department of Public Works & Transportation. So, I worked for Ms. Jordan. There was me, then my boss the Program Manager of Storm Water Quality, who reported to the Assistant Director for the Engineering Group, who reported to the Director of Public Works & Transportation, who reported to Assistant City Manager Jordan. That is four degrees of separation which I think counts as a pretty good platform from which to criticize Ms. Jordan. After all, it takes me 22 degrees of separation to find even the most tenuous link to Kevin Bacon that allegedly everyone else can make in seven degrees or less.
So, I can say with some knowledge, that the overall competence of the engineering group at PW&T was raised by Ms. Jordan having removed herself from it by moving into City administration. This is something for which we may all be grateful.
Now working at City Hall as an executive is somewhat akin to being a member of the court at Byzantium. Lots of palace intrigue, infighting, backstabbing, character assassination and outright smoke and mirrors. So, when Ted Benavides was banished from the center of power and sent into the wilderness of Denton, he took his flunky Ms. Jordan with him. After the death of a couple of short-lived emperor/city managers at City Hall Mr. Benavides was recalled to the center of power and brought along his flunky, Ms. Jordan who bowed and bent to scrape a knee as was required to show her absolute contrition. Mr. Benavides has to our everlasting benefit here in Dallas moved on. Unfortunately, his new act was a solo and so Ms. Jordan had to remain behind in that byzantine Land of Oz located on Marilla Street.
So, here we are back at the main story.
Ms. Jordan didn't need a survey to find out what the employees in CIS thought or felt. In point of fact, Ms. Jordan has little regard for anyone or any groups input at all. What she needed was some paper to put before the Civil Service Hearing Judges and administrative judges for the hatchet-job now in the works. Sad to say, Ms. Jordan is only doing her job. Or, more accurately, she is only doing her job as well as she has ever done her job, which is the same as saying not doing much at all. Watching this develop and expecting to see more in the future is like the recent 30 Rock television show where Tin Fey's character is stranded on an aircraft and tells her fellow character who is the pilot and also her boyfriend that if "this is you doing your job, you suck at it."
The former director of City Hall's technology group is a direct report to an Assistant City Manager. Said manager, would have and should have been aware of and pro-actively informing herself of these hiring activities, if for no other reason than to find out what expertise they would be applying to which of the many unmet needs existed in the technology group. Truth is though, Ms. Jordan is about as hands on a manager as Homer Simpson and subscribes to the management policy of remaining uninformed about any subject that might work to her disadvantage. Since she wasn't involved, she probably doesn't have the background documentation needed to demonstrate that she's been aware of and working on the problems within the tech unit long before the DMN got involved. And believe it or not, you really need that documentation when a political ax job is called for.
Being no stranger to political ax jobs Ms. Jordan knows only too well the first rule of politics at City Hall. Make someone else justify getting the ax and the second rule that you never want to actually be seen holding or touching the ax yourself. Hence, we get our fellow Assistant City Managers to purchase and wield the ax for us wrapped up in paper described as an employee morale survey.
But, there is a problem for Ms. Jordan, other Assistant City Manager's don't like having to carry water for their less competent fellows. So, Ms. Jordan needs to watch her political back carefully. She has a boss, Mary Suhm, who is no stranger to byzantine maneuvering in the Land of Oz down on Marilla Street, The only question is this. What is it that Jill Jordan knows and has known over these long years in Oz about Mary Suhm that has kept Ms. Suhm from letting that ax fly.
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