A man, whose name and employment I have long forgotten, came up to me to introduce himself.
“I wasn’t sure who you were, but standing here, you look to me like you’re an important person,” he said, “and I wanted to introduce myself to you.”
I’ll pause here for a moment to say that while this instance is a bit extreme, this is not a completely uncommon occurrence. People often say my face seems familiar, and I’m often mistaken for someone they’ve seen elsewhere, including the occasional celebrity. But I don’t recall anyone ever saying this specifically because I “looked important.”
I told him that I was with the governor’s office, but downplayed how important my role was. Certainly for his purposes, I was not.
“Oh, so you’re a public servant then?” he asked.
Yes, I told him. I explained that I’d spent my entire career in various roles within state government and had been with the governor for the past year.
He briefly looked flummoxed and seemed to struggle with a response.
“Oh, well, uh,” he stammered, “thank you for your service. Nice to meet you.” And he walked away.
Shortly after we moved into our new office building, which we share with a couple of other businesses and organizations, someone from another office stopped by one morning and spoke with one of our staff.
“Association of School Business Officials…what exactly is that?” he asked.
Our staff member responded that we are the membership association for assistant superintendents for business in school districts around the state, providing them with professional development and resources so they can do their job effectively.
“Oh, so you are the people who raise my property taxes every year,” he exclaimed, and politely ended the conversation.
Few people have strong opinions on how to process health claims or how to operate a canal system, but every parent has a strong idea of how they want their children educated. School business officials sit in the center of those strong and often turbulent crosscurrents.
At the heart of it, whether you lean left, right, or somewhere in between, many of us share the same hopes: that children are well cared for, that tax dollars are used wisely, and that our communities thrive. These aren’t partisan ideals — they’re deeply human ones that transcend politics.
These are not isolated occurrences. Anyone who has worked for the government at some level in some form has probably had an interaction like this. It seems like, at best, the reactions we get to being in public service are a recognition that the work feels unfamiliar, and at worst, it’s that we are the source of many, or even all, problems.
Particularly for people in high-compensation private sector jobs, it’s weird that someone would give up the possibility of individual advancement and better pay to do work that seems meaningless or even wasteful…while also deriding the nonsalary benefits the person is receiving as exorbitant. Even as they sense you’re giving up something by working at a job for less pay, they also have a sense that you’re getting too much of their tax dollars, and that your pay and benefits are far more generous than they should be, even when those assumptions are unfounded.
In Who Is Government?, a collection of essays about public servants edited by Michael Lewis and released earlier this year, writer Geraldine Brooks quotes an Internal Revenue Service employee, Jarod Koopman, about his work that “[i]t’s not about [making more money], it’s about the mission.” Danny Werfel, then IRS commissioner, went further, saying that he’d gone from the public sector to the private, and then back to government service. “I felt a bit like you do when you go overseas on vacation–it’s lovely, but it’s not home.”
To some, it may seem strange, but reading the sentiment of these IRS employees, I can’t help but think it’s hard for me to imagine prioritizing financial gain alone without also feeling connected to a mission or larger purpose. But in a heavily capitalist society, particularly one that has demonized public sector work for decades, this is a common sentiment for many people. It’s incredibly easy for those same people to point to inefficiencies or bad actors, show how the tax dollars that they are forced to contribute out of their own paychecks are being wasted, and cast a pox upon the entire house. Of course, many in the private sector also pursue mission-driven work — whether in education technology, child wellness, social entrepreneurship, or through charitable foundations. Service and impact are not exclusive to any one sector.
It’s worth noting that skepticism of government isn’t exclusive to one side of the political spectrum. Distrust can come from concerns about inefficiency, overreach, lack of representation, or even frustration with bureaucracy — some of which are entirely valid and nonpartisan. These reactions are not inherently ideological, and they underscore the importance of transparency, accountability, and continual improvement.
This isn’t a condemnation of capitalism — every system has its incentives, some of which have negative consequences. Capitalism trains us to generate revenue, spend as little as possible, and do more with less, always. The government operates differently; most importantly, it provides many services that would never be profitable for a private company to take on. As a result, it relies on public funding mechanisms that are inherently collective rather than market-driven, it often spends more than it needs to (usually due to inefficiencies created to protect taxpayer dollars), and even though it often is asked to do more with less, the citizen experience interacting with it feels the exact opposite.
Good public service often goes unnoticed. Bad public service makes headlines — and sometimes even HBO scripts. If the only things about government that we see are bad, the assumption goes, then all government must be bad.
To me, one of the most insidious cultural challenges of the last few decades is the "otherization" of government, which is turning it into an entity to be feared and loathed and controlled, rather than one with its actual purpose: serving the joint stewardship of our society.
This is a particularly vexing problem in public education. Public schools are at the intersection of both the required public funding through taxes and carrying out one of the most sacred duties of government: the care and education of our children.
Few people have strong opinions on how to process health claims or how to operate a canal system, but every parent has a strong idea of how they want their children educated. School business officials sit in the center of those strong and often turbulent crosscurrents.
In fact, we see strong opponents combine all these ideas, often referring to public schools as “government schools.” The idea of public schools has long been universally supported and appreciated. But government is bad, so if you call them government schools, people will feel less good and supportive about the work that they do.
Even still, the idea of “public” doesn’t carry the same weight that it once did. Robert Putnam’s landmark Bowling Alone argues that we’ve lost “social capital” as a society, and have turned inward and away from others. As we lose a sense of community, we lose what “public” means to us, and all the good things that it can do. We no longer have the connective tissues to think of the polity fully as a community of care for one another, but rather a system geared toward efficiency and profit — neither of which is the strong suit of government.
This article is purportedly about praising public service, but to this point, it feels more like an analysis of why public service is frowned upon. So let’s pivot.
Thank you for your everyday care for the children in your community.
Thank you for your commitment to ensuring they receive all the services that they need and deserve.
Thank you for caring about the taxpayers in your community, trying to balance the needs of the children against treating them fairly – even if they don’t think that you are.
Thank you for the long hours and tireless work — efforts that might be better paid in the private sector if you did something similar there.
If you came from the private sector, thank you for sensing that the mission was more important than the money, and wanting to contribute to the wellbeing of our future generations.
At the heart of it, whether you lean left, right, or somewhere in between, many of us share the same hopes: that children are well cared for, that tax dollars are used wisely, and that our communities thrive. These aren’t partisan ideals — they’re deeply human ones that transcend politics.
These are words that we don’t hear enough. In fact, we hear them so infrequently that when we do, the euphoria from it is at times palpable. A long time ago, I was a town supervisor, and I vividly remember a few rare instances when town residents thanked me profusely for something that I did, and the enormous sense of joy I got from that. Sometimes, it was enough to wash away the negativity that came with the role. I’m here to say that we should focus our memories and inner dialogues to those moments, and try to let the rest slide off our backs. Illegitimi non carborundum.
What else can we do? Unfortunately, it’s a difficult question with not many great answers. Otherwise, they would have been addressed already.
How do we counter the media forces that seek to make public service the enemy? This may be too challenging to address on the national stage, but are there things that we can be doing at the state and local level?
As an association, we try to balance the care for unnoticed districts with declining enrollment with the care for those who are experiencing increasing challenges, which sometimes require opposing solutions. Showing that we are all in this together, working to make education better for all children regardless of their zip code, can help to remind our communities about the good that public service can do.
Locally, continue to share your stories. Show the parent groups how your work is focused on providing better opportunities for their children. Show the taxpayer groups that there is a thoughtful process that is focused on making sure their dollars are not wasted.
This is much easier said than done. And even the best sales job on these topics will leave some members of the community unconvinced. That’s OK. We’re not going to convince everyone. In a pluralistic democracy, we shouldn’t expect — or even want — total consensus. But we keep doing our best, and your association is here to help you as best we can.