the rumors are false: working in local gov IS cool
let's hear about sf transit from my friend akash!!! let's be optimistic about local gov!!
Adjacent to our lack of community is our lack of investment and belief in local government. We often hear, rightly, about how it’s important to care about local politics, to vote in local elections, and to show up to city council meetings. But in a time where local journalism is in dire straits, and many people struggle to feel grounded in the places that they live, and local government meetings are not set up to encourage people to show up… it’s harder than it sounds. Also, I feel like most Americans have a pretty dim view of government across the board, which, fair in some ways. But this dim view enforces a very negative cycle of disinvestment and disinterest in local government, which only exacerbates our loss of community.
I decided to talk to the person I know who I associate most with enthusiasm for local government! Akash works for the Clipper Card, the Bay Area’s transit card. I figured his specific experience would be an interesting way to think about this, and also provide more optimism than I necessarily have for this topic right now.
It is easy to look at how bad things are and resign yourself or avoid thinking about it at all, but nothing improves with that mindset. As Akash says later on in this conversation, “But also one of my reasons [for working in local government] was, I want to do this because or else it’s gonna stay bad.”
When would you say you started caring about local politics?
Probably middle school: I was a nerd-ass nerd. I think a lot of my friends also liked to think about policy in general. And I don't know that I really cared about it in middle school. To be honest, I think I was caring about it because my friends were, and because I did Youth in Government in middle school and high school.
So I started doing that as well. Just kind of keeping up with those processes and getting an understanding of like, “how does government work and stuff?” I think in high school when we got a TV, watching The Daily Show to just hear about national politics or state level politics and being like, oh, okay, well, they're always making fun of C-Span. Well, let me check it out. Okay, this is what's happening. Hey, they're literally talking about my street. Let's see what more is happening or “Oh, dang, I don't, I can't believe that this is how decisions are made.” And I think it just became a part of my life to just check agendas, or check up on initiatives that Houston has been doing “Hmm, just to be like, Okay, well, it seems I love the city for some reason. And it seems like they're trying to make it better.”
When you open meeting minutes or whatever, you go to a meeting, it feels very like dry. Do you find it dry? Is it still boring?
Kinda, if I'm not super invested in the idea. My mom was like, “why aren't you more interested in environmental initiatives?” I'm just like, “They’re boring.” It was kind of boring. I think the only one that was like in contention was like this task force thing, like subtask force thing. Of like, sourcing concrete for more carbon neutral neutrality, I guess. That was one thing where I was like, okay, that's actually kind of cool. But in general, like the environmental standards of building regulation standards or stuff like that. I'm just like, they're so important. They're important.
Yeah, the reason I bring that up is because you have to have this drive. And you have to really care about it to push through the dryness or the dense writing. More often than not it’s just poorly organized materials, it's probably that. I'm not checking up on every committee or anything. You have to choose what you have the drive for.
I was thinking about your job working for the Clipper Card and I feel like I'm assuming people in the Bay just know what the Clipper is, but it's one of those jobs where you never think about the person who does it. I'm curious, what do you think surprised you about this job?
There's a lot that people don't understand about Clipper. It starts from, like someone recently said, “Oh, you shouldn't say that you work in government. People might think that you're a politician.”
That's a problem with everyone's understanding of the government.
Yeah, and they're like, “You should just say that you work for Clipper Card” and I was like “okay, here's the number one thing: I don't want them to think that I work in the private sector.” There are a lot of people out there who think the Clipper is a private product. And yeah, depending on what level I care about explaining or what level I think the other person might be at, I’ll say different things. But in terms of the Bay Area, people don't really understand who runs Clipper.
When you say, “Oh, we're Clipper,” people will be like “So you work for BART.” I'm like, well, no. The reason that New York City or Chicago can just drop Ventra and it’s easy is because the same people run the buses that run the trains that run Ventra or MTA. That's not true in SF. There's 27 different operators across the whole Bay Area.
Boston is a similarly sized city and it has one operator.
What do you mean by operator?
They run the buses or run the system that actually is the public transit system.
You said 20. I'm like, there's CalTrain. There's BART. What are the other 25??
Oh, it's like every little city bus. And they compete with each other. Sometimes the same trains will also come into the city, Golden Gate Ferry and Golden Gate Transit. There's the San Francisco Bay Area Ferry, which competes with Golden Gate Ferry. There's AC Transit. There's Union City Transit, which is a fleet of 11 buses, and its operational area is entirely enveloped by it. Like AC transit's area of operation. There's no reason for it to exist but whatever. There's one guy who works part time, 10 hours a week and he retired like 10 years ago. Then he got bored and he came back and he just does the buses. That's it. And it takes 10 hours a week for him. Like, I think there's so many small ones.
So in most places, if not almost all, the people who have the transit payments card also run the buses. But in San Francisco the Clipper Card is a completely separate entity from anyone else. We just do the electronic payments.
Did it just happen? Because we didn't expect the Bay to become its own thing like this?
No. Oh, California has got some weird stuff. And part of that is that nobody wanted to give up power. And there wasn't good organization at the beginning, and nobody made it their priority to consolidate at the onset. And so it's just kind of stayed car-centric. There's no city in California that has good transit. San Francisco Bay Area has the same transit scores as Houston.
Why do you think more people our age don't work jobs like yours? Why does everyone I know work as a consultant, not for the Clipper System or something.
The company I originally worked for was a boutique firm that specialized in engineering services. And they had a small department that did property development, and acquisitions. I chose that because I thought that would be better for my early career development. And I thought, if you went into a government job, you'd be pigeonholed, or it'll just not be good. I thought government jobs were stable, but they paid less. I just didn't know. I thought it would be frustrating. Since coming here, I do try to push people to move here and to move into government generally because especially for my job, it's not even true that compensation isn’t good.
I've talked to so many people. I don't know why there's such a reluctance to work in government. Like, I feel like people would sooner work at a nonprofit than in the government.
Okay. I have thoughts on this too. But also, I think in my head I don't associate the US government with like early career in terms of having positions available for someone who doesn't have experience. Not in the way that other civil services do. How did you find your job?
I was just reading two random PDFs and found it but I was just doing a lot of research about who's doing work that I think is cool in the US. Also I was laid off. So it was hard. It was hard. I had a lot more time to look I guess than someone who has a job and is trying to pivot. But in general there’s USAJobs. I mean, it is intimidating in the sense like I definitely felt like I was and still am underqualified for the position I have right now. But I don't know, I'm here.
Before coming in, I was really kind of nervous about it, about being pigeonholed or it being slower and everyone being old. But everyone at my job is so accomplished and awesome.
They're so good at their jobs. I love my team. But yeah, they prove that wrong, like everyday. And I like to think that I prove myself wrong, or that notion wrong everyday. But I recognize that not every place is like that. But also one of my reasons was, I want to do this because or else it’s gonna stay bad. And I think I have made a difference.
There have been a lot of considerations that are brought up for our low-income accessibility program or access programs for people with disabilities. I like to think that I increase the value of what the financial viability is, or at least even the administrative viability, like, a lot of times it’s just “Is there somebody to just take that task on?” There are a lot of things, like these projects that I've been doing, that wouldn't have gotten done if I wasn't here, because everyone else was busy doing more pressing stuff. But it's not like the stuff that I was doing wasn’t important to everyone, just like, there wasn't time.
I'm curious what the value of consultants working with the government is, and also what you think is different between “Oh, these consultants are working in the government” versus like, “this person who works in the government is working in the government.”
Yeah, I feel like I can't really tell the difference, because at the end of the day, I kind of use them as assistance for certain things like administrative stuff, to keep track of, like a conflict with a change order and a contract. Or like I don't take notes. I just tell the consultant hey, take notes. But like, again, that's anecdotal evidence, I don't actually know what goes on at other places.
I feel like the difference between the consultants and me is that my goal is more long term. My goal is, like literally the only thing that motivates me is, is this going to be a good system? Whereas, for the consultants, it's not that I'm not saying they don't care. But I'm saying that at the end of the day, if they had to pick between making a good system and meeting their profit margin requirements, they would pick the latter.
Links
I regret to inform you that I spent a bunch of time reading about effective altruism recently. EA has a lot of money and holds a lot of influence in certain realms and it seems to be rapidly accruing even more of both. Here’s how it became the force it is now. This is a critique of its utilitarian core. I remain in favor of ineffective altruism, but I salute EA for its branding and I heavily respect some of the things EAs do. Also didn’t realize the Worm Wars were so methodologically depressing.
I refer to “the mental load” a lot and sometimes fear it is an inevitable compromise in marriage, so it made me very happy to read this interview with Kate Mangino.
Conservative prestige TV and bubbles we reside in.
I had never heard the story of Chol Soo Lee until this episode of TTSG.
Why do recipes lowball the garlic?
I cannot even try to onomatopoeia-ify the noise I made when I heard that the Biden Administration is planning to kick COVID tests, treatment, and vaccines into the commercial market in the next several months. “We have the tools,” is a common refrain… without any acknowledgment of the multitude of barriers to accessing the tools.
Workplace software tracking is far more prevalent than I personally thought, and it’s making peoples’ jobs way worse.
Nobody knows what a healthy relationship is, and we’re in a cultural moment where people will sometimes pretend that unceremoniously dropping people whenever they upset you is self-care.
Love a good mom essay.