The Difference with Policies

I don't mean insurance policies, like my life insurance. Although I've had success with NY Life since 1972, it's really a contract. So policies can be contracts between two parties, but usually they are "issued' by a person or an organization and "followed" by others. Even my life insurance policy, is all one way - in NY Life's favor -- I had no input into its terms at all. Accept it or reject it, which is the way most purchases are (not all). I have never even seen the terms of my state life insurance policy that all employees are entitled to. That was a good deal, and cost zero, but when I was a kid just starting out with the state, I failed to sign up for contributory insurance and pay a premium -- which would have tripled my death benefit. At the time, making $3,000 a year, it didn't seem worth it. But of course it was, because it would have tripled my salary as the benefit. I could have had life insurance when I retired worth $300,000 to Janet if I had signed up for it back then.Ant the premium was just pennies on my slowly advancing salary.

No, I mean policy, as my informal policies of not stepping on trash where I walk, but picking it up and disposing of it. Even if that meant sticking it in my back pocket until I saw a garbage can later. Or tee'ing my cigarette butts -- flicking off the lit end when I'm an inch from the filter, and stomping it out carefully. Then I'd carefully empty the tobacco left in the cigarette stub, and place it in my pocket for the trash later. Over the years Janet got used to me embarrassing her and picking up trash, but hated washing my pants with butts in the pocket where it mixed with other wash.   She'd say it "stinks them up" and had to wash some clothes over again. So that required a new policy on my part -- throw away those butts!

At work, circa 2002 I wrote up policies for our work unit, the Statewide Contract Consolidation Unit. Just a couple of pages, nothing heavy, but it actually became a two-inch binder after a few years. Most of our state employee policies were in the Employee Handbook (which no one got a copy of). Things like calling the boss within a half hour of work start time or leave a message that I'd be late, or out sick that day. It was against policy to call out with a vacation day without advance notice -- but no one followed that. We used sick time and vacation time, if we had it, anytime we wanted to and most managers or directors didn't balk about granting it - as long as we had accrued time. Even the three-day rule, requiring a doctor's note after three days absence, was routinely ignored by employees and managers.

So policies, like laws, rules and regulations get broken - however, there's exceptions or exceptional circumstances that change their application or enforcement. This was very easy to do for the rules I made up, like having all outside correspondence be signed by me, especially letters to state agencies, vendors or others. That changed when I was signing hundreds every busy season, and with the advent of email. Its insane to restrict employees from sending emails because they may not be my own "perfect" wording, or not letting them sign their own letters, usually modifications of our basic form letters.

So to me, policies are much easier to change than laws, rules or regulations, hence I like them better -- more flexible. There is not a single state repository for policies. The closest thing to it is the Circular Letters (go to http://www.nj.gov/infobank/circular/circindx.htm) issued by entities like the state Purchase Bureau, for all state purchasing, or those by the Office of Management and Budget for handling all fiscal and financial matters.I had to know them forward and backward because they guided our day-to-day contracting operations. The rules changed regularly based on who the new division directors were and their personal take on how they, and hundreds of other agencies, should be guided.

That was one of many aspects to work that I liked; knowing and implementing regulations and policies for our own work. It was very liberating having them -- at least we knew what they were and how to work around them when necessary (usually by a phone call or email to a sympathetic higher-up, or possibly a meeting).

But those are other stories which I'll get into when I cover the individual circular letter. Next up will be what we really did in response to 11-14-DPP for example, Requests for Waivers of Advertising. We generated over contract waivers every year, totalling $36 million, for our Information Technology procurements which covered 70 agencies and 80 vendor companies. Another favorite of mine, which we didn't use much but all agencies used heavily was 11-10-DPP Delegated Purchase Authority (DPA), which gave agencies the ability to spend tens of thousands of dollars with a vendor without any central purchasing oversight. Those were fun to do. I gave a training class on DPA use once, to all our Treasury fiscal and procurement folks.

All fun stuff -- spending other people's money that we felt was our own, and we could do anything we liked -- within limits of course. Ha!.