Galt's Gulch
14

Your state employes really do care--but about what

Posted by bobcorlett 9 years, 5 months ago to Business
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I have been in the development (home) for 40 years, the last twenty on my own and with a partner. An E-1 pump grinds sewage and pumps it uphill to the gravity flow system. At the time they were rated for one pump for two houses. We were 54 houses into the development when a department of environmental quality guy shows up and said we should have been using one pump for each house. Ask for a meeting and 15 DOQ guys met us and you could tell they wanted us to fail by the looks on their faces. Claimed we had been informed of the change and they said they would sent it to me. A short time later I received a letter with the notice of change. One problem! The letterhead had a picture of our present (at the time) Governor but the letter was backdated to before he was elected! What they cared about was seeing how much money they could cost us or break us. When the letter and it's flaw was pointed out to our state senator we quickly got a waiver for work completed. Without that rather childish mistake we would have been out several hundred thousand dollars--sure they care!

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  • Posted by gerstj 9 years, 5 months ago
    Congrats for backing them off, but there needs to be punishment. Someone needs to be fired and someone indicted for creating a fraudulent government document. These types of petty bureaucrats live forever unless there are severe consequences for what they did.
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  • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 5 months ago
    I have recently received a notice from the County that my high-tech Advantex septic system needed to be inspected and tested. I found out that hundreds of these notices had been sent out. There is no disputing that this should be done.

    But.

    In the process of looking for a licensed inspector, I discovered that all over the country, engineering standards for sewage systems were being 'redefined' (in the manner described above) and people were being required to install high-tech systems. This is apparently being done with no change in law, just a shift in the interpretation of the law. In some instances (eg Lancaster desert) these regulations are being used to force the removal of people from their homes on land that they own.

    Quietly, quietly, this is happening.

    Jan, calling another potential inspector
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 9 years, 5 months ago
    The problem is that these guys don't know what their job is. They are there to facilitate people getting things done, and think rather they are both the legislative and justice departments. This behavior stems from two things 1) small-minded people given undue authority, and 2) too many people employed to do the job at hand, too much time on their hands. Too much government breeds inefficiency, waste and corruption.
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  • Posted by $ Snezzy 9 years, 5 months ago
    This sort of regulatory action often results from a secret attempt to grab property. Our local flea market suddenly found they were in violation of the fire codes, and were required to hire a fire truck for the hours they were open. Must have been $300 an hour our more, for sure.

    What was up? Well, someone wanted to buy the property (right near a major highway), but didn't like the price of $15,000,000. If condemned, the price would obviously be more like less than a million--anything to get those county inspectors to go away.

    Oh, and the county discovered that the building there had never received construction permits. "No record of any permits." The building were put in about 1988. The county's records only went back to 1996 because of "housecleaning" involved in moving to the new courthouse.

    It took over a year to get the county to go away, and I don't know what happened behind the scenes. Property's still for sale, if you want it. Got $15,000,000?
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 9 years, 5 months ago
    As a retired state employee (Department of Corrections), I can tell you what a lot of state employees may only care about (there's good eggs and bad eggs): a positive job evaluation.
    A positive job evaluation means a "step raise" as well as added job security.
    That's what those DOQ guys were after but at the deep expense of somebody else.
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  • Posted by rbunce 9 years, 5 months ago
    I had an issue with State employees working for an agency that is supposed to provide oversight for local government utility systems. Instead of oversight they are in the rubber stamp business... the more local governments get their utility systems in place, the more taxpayer funding the agency receives. So I point out some serious errors in my municipalities proposed wastewater project to the officials in this agency and they have no idea what to do. They forward my letter to the municipality and contractor, accept whatever nonsense response they receive back from them, then move forward with approving and providing significant State taxpayer funding for the project. It turns out to be the disaster predicted, significant engineering issues and three times the estimated cost... not their problem though.
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  • Posted by ChuckyBob 9 years, 5 months ago
    Scoutmom, I just escaped with my money from the asylum called the California Republic two months ago. I am in the process of helping my last child to escape also. I'm through with the insanity.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 9 years, 5 months ago
    hatred of the good for being the good = evil. these
    folks have climbed into that evil pile over there, y'know,
    the enemies of humankind. somehow, the pile
    keeps growing larger. -- j

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