Chapter 386

In early September, after Municipal Party Secretary Li Ruifang took office, the first personnel adjustment was completed; Zheng Wei was transferred to Deputy Secretary-General of the Municipal Party Committee, and he reported to Lu Fan immediately; Lu Fan directly assigned him to assist Secretary Li Ruifang in her work.

Wu Wentong was transferred to Director of the Municipal Development and Reform Commission, and Lu Fan personally saw him to his new post.

Next, the municipal institutional reform was launched. Lu Fan, following the provincial plan, established the Yingjiang Municipal Institutional Reform Leading Group, with Municipal Party Secretary Li Ruifang and Mayor Zhao Tao as group leaders, Deputy Municipal Party Secretary Guo Zhitao, Executive Vice Mayor Zhang Rongqiu, and Organization Department Head Zhang Ziqiang as deputy leaders; the finance, personnel, and compilation offices, etc., and all counties and districts served as member units, with Deputy Secretary-General of the Municipal Party Committee Lu Fan as office director, and the office located in the Municipal Party Committee Office.

Don't underestimate the institutional reform; it carries great authority, can propose opinions on merged units, examine and approve the 'Institutional Reform Plans' of all counties and districts, and set staffing, positions, and personnel. After the reform is completed, a major personnel adjustment is inevitable, so it has attracted widespread attention across the city.

Lu Fan naturally became a prominent figure; his office was crowded with leaders from various departments and heads of all counties and districts, all coming to vie for their own 'small plot of land' interests.

Lu Fan carefully studied the provincial 'Institutional Reform Plan', which was personally overseen and formulated by Wang Hongtao when he served as Deputy Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee; it completely avoided the vicious cycle of downsizing—expansion—downsizing again—expansion again, and basically achieved perfection.

Lu Fan understood that institutional reform means setting staffing, positions, and personnel; through streamlining the organization, it achieves rationalized staffing, rational organizational setup, and consistency of authority and responsibility, ensuring that after the reform, departments have both unity and division, primary and secondary roles, duties are fulfilled properly, and procedures run smoothly.

Therefore, it is no surprise that after mergers, units of one or two hundred people appear, because once staffing is set, overstaffed units cannot take in new personnel. But in a few years or over a decade, as staff retire or leave their posts, the workforce of each unit will naturally trend toward rationality, and the fiscal burden can be greatly reduced.

On September 10, Yingjiang City held a meeting of the Institutional Reform Leading Group, with all members attending, and Deputy Secretary-General of the Municipal Party Committee Lu Fan delivered a special report.

After the meeting began, Lu Fan reported: 'Leaders, in accordance with the overall requirements of the central and provincial governments on institutional reform, especially the 'General Opinions of Qinchuan Province on Municipal and County Institutional Reform', combined with our city's actual situation, the Institutional Reform Leading Office has preliminarily drafted our city's institutional reform plan, which I will report as follows:'

After the reform, the municipal level will have 37 party and government organs; the compilation office and civil service bureau will be merged into the Organization Department; the publicity department will uniformly manage news publishing and film work; the land and planning bureaus will be merged to form the Natural Resources Bureau; a Municipal Veterans Affairs Bureau will be established; a Municipal Emergency Management Bureau will be established; a Medical Insurance Bureau will be established; an Administrative Approval Bureau will be established; partial functions of the industry and commerce bureau, quality supervision bureau, food and drug bureau, salt bureau, price bureau, and commerce bureau will be merged to form the Market Supervision Administration……

After the report, Mayor Zhao Tao, with doubts, said: 'The province has 41 departments, and our city has four fewer than the province. Is this necessary? The provincial committee's requirement is for localities to combine with actual conditions, giving two flexible quotas; to waste them like this? This probably does not serve the interests of Yingjiang's people!'

Deputy Municipal Party Secretary Guo Zhiming immediately refuted: 'This serves the interests of the people; only some departments' interests are harmed. The growing pains are short-term; in the long run, the more departments are streamlined, the more it serves the people's interests, after all, fiscal personnel funding comes from taxpayers' money!'

Zhao Tao still wanted to argue, but helplessly, Guo Zhiming had taken the moral high ground; one cannot claim that cadres' interests outweigh the people's, so he had nothing to say.

Municipal Party Secretary Li Ruifang said: 'Since the institutional reform was launched, leading cadres have been anxious and distracted from work; the door to Lu Fan's office is almost being trampled flat, everyone is scheming about their own little tricks; my opinion is to settle things quickly! But after the reform, unknown problems and troubles will certainly not be few; Lu Fan, you have studied this more deeply, please continue.'

'Okay, Secretary, combining recent work, I will discuss several possible problems; please correct any inadequacies, leaders.'

Merging and reorganizing units will give rise to two kinds of psychological problems. First, a sense of 'loss'. The goal of institutional reform is consolidation, streamlining, and efficiency, which inevitably involves personnel and position adjustments. Consequently, a widespread pessimistic mindset emerges, feeling that room for advancement has shrunk, competition has intensified, promotion channels are congested, feeling a loss, and experiencing a psychological gap. Second, a negative attitude. Some comrades who are relatively disadvantaged in age often develop negative emotions after the reform, with a 'the boat has docked, the car has arrived at the station' mentality. These bad attitudes lead cadres to relax their self-demands, lose work enthusiasm, lower work standards, and some even develop a 'make a quick buck' compensatory mentality, heading toward the depths of illegal crime.

There are also continuous work problems during the reform transition period. Workload will not decrease, and service to the masses cannot be interrupted. Moreover, two further problems may arise, affecting work continuity. First, 'new officials ignore old accounts'. New leaders do not endorse, supervise, or inspect the existing work plans, eager to 'start a new stove', they create a whole new set of work arrangements, completely handing over the original work, leading to disordered work procedures, measures failing to be implemented, work effectiveness discounted, and the masses dissatisfied. Second, 'intestinal obstruction'. During the reform period, units focus on internal work, making it easy for the work of former superiors and subordinates to be misplaced or missing, causing policy implementation to encounter 'intestinal obstruction' problems; moreover, some may use reform as an excuse to do nothing or act recklessly, leading to public prejudice against reform.

In response to the problems raised by Lu Fan, everyone agreed; Municipal Party Secretary Li Ruifang said: 'Only by undergoing a series of 'growing pains' can reform break out of its cocoon and soar toward a new journey. If such 'growing pains' are not effectively addressed, they are very likely to affect the overall situation of institutional reform and hinder the continuous progress of social undertakings. Therefore, we must prepare in advance, take preventive measures, keep problems always within controllable limits, and resolve them steadily.'

I propose a few points: first, be open and sincere, squarely face all demands, smooth the channels for cadres and workers to give feedback, understand what grassroots cadres and workers think, want, and expect, and seek support for decision-making.

Second, proceed gradually and arrange the reform transition period reasonably. Special attention must be paid to the handover of work; we must sort out and inspect all work, always ensuring that matters have someone in charge and someone handling them, that communication flows smoothly up and down, without gaps, interruptions, or mistakes.

Third, seek truth from facts, and solve problems by implementing according to the 'Institutional Reform Plan'.

Fourth, attach great importance to cadres' psychological problems, guide cadres and workers to focus their thoughts and energy on work, unite efforts to push the reform cause toward success. Be vigilant against various bad attitudes bred in the reform; for the 'arrived at the station' mentality, laissez-faire attitude, freedom mentality, etc., that arise in the reform, we must hold high the banner of party discipline and state law, tighten the cadres' and workers' sense of awe for integrity and self-discipline, not cross the 'red line', not touch the 'high-voltage line'.

Fifth, solidly carry out cadre selection work to create a fair and just agency atmosphere. In institutional reform, personnel issues are most critical, and the core of personnel issues is cadre selection, with fairness as the bottom line. How can we select appropriate cadres to gain everyone's approval? By comparing performance, ability, and quality, holding open competitions and fair competition, silencing various noises, and coalescing the centripetal force of cadres and workers.

This work is headed by Lu Fan, who, according to the Regulations on the Work of Selecting and Appointing Party and Government Leading Cadres, will draft an initial cadre adjustment plan. It aims to increase cadre exchanges, break down departmental interest barriers, stimulate cadre work vitality and motivation, and at the same time improve cadres' overall quality.

After a vote by the leading group, Yingjiang City's 'Institutional Reform Plan' was smoothly approved.

With the prevailing trend, reform is inevitable; after the plan was issued, the eyes of all municipal leading cadres turned to the Municipal Party Committee, and Lu Fan became a 'hotshot' leader.

After the plan was issued to all counties and districts, the secretaries and county chiefs compared it and found that the provincial and municipal documents differed greatly; the two flexible quotas were directly 'taken' by the city, meaning that the counties lost two units' staffing, which could involve dozens of cadres and a dozen or so leadership positions—something they could not tolerate—so they flocked to the city to seek justice from Lu Fan.

Facing everyone's doubts and persistent pressure, Lu Fan refused to budge, stating that the counties' plans are not allowed to include those two flexible units; they must follow the city's plan and implement it unchanged, otherwise their submitted plans will not be approved!

Unwilling, they then ran to the secretary's office to demand institutions, but were all brushed off by Li Ruifang to Lu Fan.

Mayor Zhao Tao was in the midst of intensely selecting a secretary-general for the municipal government, a position touted as the city's top division-level post, which originally was highly attractive to county party secretaries and heads of municipal departments, but now no one inquired about it.

Because everyone is sensible, if the mayor cannot stand firm, the municipal government secretary-general becomes a hot potato, and few want to take that risk.

But there are always those who fear nothing; Red Flag County Chief Pu Lei, with a mindset of seeking wealth through risk, actively sought and obtained the position under Mayor Zhao Tao.

Faced with a county chief's 'defection', Zhao Tao was overjoyed.

Originally, it was against the rules for a county chief to directly promote the municipal government secretary-general, but Zhao Tao couldn't worry about all that, because none of those county party secretaries gave him any face, and Zhao Tao understood the principle—'spend a thousand gold to buy a horse's bone'—as long as Pu Lei is properly placed, the catfish effect will arise, talents will continually gather around him, and great things can be accomplished.

This time Zhao Tao learned his lesson, directly reported to Municipal Party Secretary Li Ruifang, proposing to transfer Pu Lei to serve as municipal government secretary-general. He figured it out: although he is the mayor, in Yingjiang he really has little say; at this stage, to get things done, he must rely on the Municipal Party Secretary.