Many government employees would chafe at being labeled a bureaucrat, a term that conjures up images of labyrinthine regulations wrapped in red tape.
Jack Carling embraces the description — with a caveat.
In Mr. Carling’s view, which is based on five decades of working in government at all levels, there are two kinds of bureaucrats. One is the hidebound stickler for the rules. The other is willing to bend the rules if that is the most direct and effective means to a desired end.
“In my estimation, I was one of those who liked to massage and stretch the rules a little bit and not be so darn on-the-mark with the way they were written,” Mr. Carling said. “I got into trouble a couple of times but, what the hell, everybody does.”
Mr. Carling, 83, has documented his rule-bending experiences and their impact in a new memoir, “Fifty Years a Bureaucrat or How to Really Get the Job Done.”
The book, arranged in 70 short chapters, traces the Roaring Brook Twp. resident’s career from his time with the Scranton Redevelopment Authority through his turn as leader of the Disaster Programs Division for the state Department of Community Affairs to, finally, his stint as a disaster troubleshooter for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Every career has its highlight, and Mr. Carling said his probably came in the 1980s, when he became the architect of the Centralia mine fire property acquisition and relocation project.
By the time Mr. Carling was introduced to Centralia in 1980 while working at DCA, an underground fire had already been raging out of control beneath the tiny Columbia County borough for 18 years, and conditions seemed to be deteriorating by the day.
He can recall the exact date — Aug. 11, 1983 — when residents voted 346-200 to abandon their homes and move out.
That was a Thursday. The following Monday, Mr. Carling found himself at a meeting of the state’s Centralia task force, which was headed by Nick DeBenedictis, secretary of the Department of Environmental Resources.
“Nick opened the meeting and he looked at me and said, ‘What the hell do we do, Jack?’ ” Mr. Carling recalled.
Mr. Carling responded that he could have a team ready to go to Centralia two days later to start developing a relocation plan and budget. Mr. DeBenedictis left the room to call Gov. Dick Thornburgh.
“He came back and said I had 17 days to put it together,” Mr. Carling said. “I said, ‘That’s not a lot of time — you have 300 households to talk to, plus a pile of businesses and couple of churches.’ But he wanted it before Labor Day.”
Mr. Carling marshaled his own staff and also plucked relocation specialists from redevelopment authorities around the state to meet the tight deadline.
“I delivered the package to the governor’s office on the Friday before Labor Day: a $42 million budget and a nice thick book of all the requirements of the (federal) Uniform Relocation Act,” he said.
The package went to the state’s congressional delegation a couple of weeks later and, on Nov. 18, 1983 — just over three months after the relocation vote — the plan passed Congress.
“It was a four-line item in the Department of Interior budget: four lines, $42 million,” Mr. Carling said.
As part of its mission at DCA — now the Department of Community and Economic Development — Mr. Carling’s division was called upon any time there was a situation that required people to move from their homes. That typically meant a flood, tornado or mine cave-in — but not always.
Mr. Carling said the most unusual relocation he handled involved two women living in a radioactive duplex in Lansdowne, Delaware County.
When he got the call, he immediately assumed radon infiltration, but the reality was far more bizarre. A former resident of the home, a University of Pennsylvania physics professor, had processed enriched radium ore in the basement for 20 years beginning in 1924, leaving the property heavily contaminated.
Mr. Carling’s staff found apartments for the women and took over management of the house while the federal government decided what to do with it.
“It was very quietly done because we didn’t want to excite anybody,” he said.
However, a Philadelphia newspaper got wind of the project and published a story that included a photograph of the house taken with a filter that made it glow green.
“The town went nuts,” Mr. Carling said.
The house eventually became a Superfund project.
“It cost them $2 million to disassemble the house and haul it out to Nevada and bury it,” he said. “So, that is where it is today.”
Mr. Carling said if there is a theme to the book, it is that most problems can be solved through flexibility and consensus.
He pointed out the Centralia plan got fast-tracked in part because two senior Pennsylvania congressmen, Republican Joseph McDade and Democrat John Murtha, put aside party differences and got behind it.
“I emphasize that throughout the book,” Mr. Carling said. “Compromise and working together gets stuff done.”
Contact the writer:
dsingleton@timesshamrock.com
Where to find it
Jack Carling’s “Fifty Years a Bureaucrat or How to Really Get the Job Done” is available from the Lackawanna Historical Society, 232 Monroe Ave., Scranton, or online at www.lackawannahistory.org.
Mr. Carling will also have book signings Saturday, Dec. 6, from 1 to 3 p.m. at North Pocono Public Library, 1315 Church St., Moscow, and Saturday, Dec. 13, from 1 to 3 p.m. at Electric City Trolley Museum, 300 Cliff St., Scranton.