Four years after 2020, the country is still reckoning with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the presidential election. Among those who experienced upheaval are government workers — despite the attention national candidates attract, state and town employees often go unnoticed.
Samuel Gebru, a professor of the practice in the political science department at Tufts, noted that local civil employees are the ones responsible for solving day-to-day community issues.
“The president of the United States does not fix your potholes and does not determine your curriculum,” Gebru said. “The most direct impact a government level could have — it’s local.”
COVID-19 imposed a litany of new challenges on these workers.
“Government officials at the local level are already pretty strained,” Gebru continued. “You enter a global pandemic, that adds a whole different dimension.”
With more immediate problems to address — and fewer resources to tackle those problems — local government work is demanding. When accounting for low salaries, the job of local government employees becomes increasingly difficult.
Meredith McLain, an associate professor of political science at Tufts, noted that local governments already experience higher turnover rates than the federal government.
“State bureaucracies have a lot more turnover than the federal bureaucracy does, and that’s partially because state bureaucracies are very different in terms of protections,” McLain said, noting that state government workers have weaker protections and lower wages than federal employees. COVID-19 only compounded these issues.
“I was in my office by myself for months, and I’d be the one getting [constituents’] calls [about] who was getting sick, who was dying, who was losing their business and everything they had, and it’s a lot to carry with you,” Joseph Curtatone, who served as mayor of Somerville from 2004 to 2022, recalled.
COVID-19 posed health and economic challenges; but with misinformation and increased politicization, government workers became overwhelmed.
“First, you already have a busy life as a local government official or as a state government official. Secondly, now you’re managing a global pandemic without any real leadership at the national level, then the third dynamic to all of this is the conspiracy theories,” Gebru said.
Among those most affected were election officials, who were burdened by an unprecedented amount of mail-in ballots and became the focus of former President Donald Trump’s campaign discrediting the integrity of the election.
Though election fraud is exceedingly rare in the United States, elections workers — many of whom are unelected — were suddenly thrust into the spotlight, receiving threats and attention unlike ever before.
“We’re seeing the doxxing of local and state officials. We’re seeing the harassment of not only them, but their spouses and/or their children,” Gebru said.
The pressure became overwhelming for many. Although Curtatone’s decision to step down was unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic — he had served as mayor for 18 years, and was ready for a change — he acknowledged the toll the public health crisis had.
“You’re trying to do what’s best, keep your community healthy and safe … and then you see elected members in our society, or volunteers of different bodies of government being attacked or put in the crosshairs of political aim — that’s forced people out,” Curtatone said.
According to a CBS News investigation, over one third of top election officials nationwide have left their posts following the 2020 election. This increased turnover could coincide with the higher amount of intimidation and threats election workers have received in recent years.
“When we think about the level of harassment that election officials have received, particularly in the last four or five years, it’s no wonder that many of them have been fed up, have just said, ‘I’m done,’” Gebru said.
Since elections are administered at the state level, unelected federal employees have largely remained free from election-related harassment. But federal employee turnover could become an issue in 2025 if Trump is reelected.
“I think that if [Trump] is reelected, he will reinstitute Schedule F. The biggest concern there is that you have more people in positions of power who are not as well qualified as you would [have] under a civil servant system,” McLain said.
Schedule F, a rule instituted by executive order in Oct. 2020, stripped thousands of government worker positions of their civil servant protections. President Joe Biden reversed the decision in 2021, but Trump has vowed to restore his own power to “fire rogue bureaucrats.”
If Schedule F is reinstated, many policy-making jobs could be taken from experienced government employees and handed to political appointees.
“We know for a fact that political appointees have less expertise and they’re less effective at their jobs,” McLain said. “Part of this is because when you have a civil servant, they are naturally going to stay in office longer because they have these protections, and they’re not coming in and out with administrations. We want people to be in office longer because you gain expertise.”
In order to combat high turnover and burnout among government employees, Gebru recommended a multi-pronged approach involving civic education, higher wages and protections for workers. He also stressed the importance of recruiting more government workers.
“It’s important that we get a new generation of people in government,” Gebru said. “It’s important that we get their lived experiences, their professional experiences, their academic experiences in the decision-making process.”
