B&G REPORT.

“This is the last B&G Report we’ll be publishing in 2025 (the next new column will appear in this space on January 12, 2026 )  And so, we thought it only appropriate for us to look back at the columns we’ve done over the last year to pick out ten of our favorites – and provide them to our readers who may have missed them the first time around. Take a look, and as NBC used to say  in a campaign to get people to watch its reruns, “If you haven’t seen it, it's new to you.”   Unc

When the federal government announced that it intended to create a new Department of Government Efficiency, we had our doubts – which were fulfilled when the news emerged that the vast majority of DOGE’s efforts were to cut back on government employees to the extent that some agencies have been hobbled by the lack of trained workers. Soon enough we began to hear that a number of states, which were led by Republicans, were also starting programs with the phrase DOGE, or a vari

Several years ago, when the nation was in the depths of the pandemic, there was hardly an article we could write that didn’t bring the impact of Covid-19 into play. Even though the public sector was still delivering tons of services, collecting taxes and trying to create affordable housing, everybody we talked to about these topics would bring in questions of how they were being impacted by the pandemic. We were disheartened by the terrible toll the pandemic was taking, but,

In a surprising number of conversations in recent months, we find that political tensions are depressing our friends and giving them a sense that government has ceased to function in a way that gives them hope for the future. And that’s when we try to cheer them up ( at least a little bit). We point out that cities, counties and states are doing a good number of positive things – in both red and blue portions of the country. Sometimes, this takes a little convincing. The page

Some time ago, in a conversation with a high-ranking county official, he told us about the three attributes that he sought when hiring a new employee: “attitude, aptitude and adaptability.” Subsequently in looking up those words online, we’ve realized that he didn’t make the “three A’s” up himself, but the idea remained with us as a sensible one. Clearly, the fundamental hurdles before someone should be hired for a job in state or local government are attitude and aptitude. I