Hate the government, love the snowplow driver

In this age of social media preening, modesty is a lost art.

To her credit, Paula Heyde seemed embarrassed to become the center of attention. Heyde, who is retiring as city clerk, received a ceremonial key to the city and was honored with a reception after a recent City Council meeting.

Her tenure was remarkable: more than 40 years at City Hall, including roughly 38 as city clerk responsible for maintaining public records. To put it in perspective, her successor will have to stay until 2064 to equal her longevity.

This council meeting, however, produced something more remarkable than cookies and accolades. The council chamber was packed with former city officials – elected and appointed – who came out on a dark January evening to recognize Heyde’s unassuming work in municipal government.

It serves as a reminder that government is a lot easier to hate in the abstract. When you look at the people who keep the trains running on time, that hatred starts to dissolve.

Or to relate to more recent events: We complain about snow removal but we sure appreciate the guy who shows up with a plow at 2 in the morning.

Nowhere is this disconnect more apparent than at the St. Joseph School District, because a large segment of the population loves their teachers and distrusts the administrators. The flaw in this thinking is that many of these loathsome administrators were beloved teachers at one time. We are expected to believe they became heartless or ineffective bureaucrats in the blink of an eye.

It makes no sense.

This phenomenon takes its ultimate form in the chainsaw-wielding approach to dealing with the federal workforce. To be sure, the federal bureaucracy is bloated and maddeningly ineffective at times.

But then again, you sure miss those folks when you can’t get into a national park or you experience flight delays.

None of this is to suggest government, at any level, should get a pass on scrutiny and criticism. But there’s a difference between policy and people.

Government is run by people. Most of them, like Paula Heyde, are people you’d like if you met them.

Maybe there’s a better strategy than giving government workers cookies when they leave. Maybe we should try being nicer to them while they’re here.