Comment on the Reason blog,"Who is John Hamilton?"

Right now in NYC the subways are plastered with advertisements for the municipal employees union DC 37 condemning Mayor Bloomberg for using outside consultants when all their unionized civil servants are ready willing and eager to help. The ads all claim that the consultants are more expensive than the government employees. So why is the administration willing to hire outside consultants instead of using its own civil service staff? The answer is simple to an economist. The price difference between the two workers is a measure of just how inefficient and unmanageable the civil servants are. Rather than try to get any work out of the existing staff the administration can get better results using the same money to hire fewer but better motivated outside consultants.