Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1953-05-18
In the Interest of Efficiency

AS officials in charge of the District re-
organization admit, there will be lot of debate
over various details of the proposed consolida-
ton Of licensing and inspections services of the
District government. But there can be no
question about the need for an overall re-
organization of these services. recent survey
by The Star disclosed numerous instances of
overlapping of authority and duplication Of in
Spections. With some types Of business in
Washington, life has become virtually one Of
fetal inspection after another. Sometimes the
inspectors almost fall over one another when,
by coincidence or otherwise, they appear at one
time at the same establishment This waSteful
system-or rather lack of a system-is costly to
District taxpayers and irritating to victims Of
the inspection and licensing procedures.
survey report by the Districts new Man.
agement Office quotes from series Of Star
articles as follows: "A laundry chosen at ran
dom reported it is inspected by boiler industrial
safety, fire marshalS, minimum wage, weights
and measures, health, and license inspectors. A
gas station reported visits from the fire mar
shall, weights and measures, health building,
sewer boiler and license inspectors. A grocery
may be visited by an ABC Board inspector If
the place sells beer or whisky; the police if it
has a pin-ball machine, and inspectors from
weights and measures License Bureau Bureau
of Food Inspection Bureau of Public Health
Engineering, fire marshal, Industrial Safety Di-
vision and Department of Inspections -. These
are minimum inspections. If the businessman
wants to build new building or make major
alteration, he may be visited by inspectors rep
reSenting plumbing, electrical, elevator indus
trial safety, fire safety public health engineer
ing, smoke and boiler, building and other Dis
trict divisions"
The reorganization experts do not contend
that any of these inspections are unimportant
or can be dispensed with. They do hold, how
ever that it is waSteful and inefficient to scatter
them all over the District government without
coordination of any kind and with very little
contact among them. They would centralize
all of the inspection and licensing activities in
a new department, under one head, whose job
1t would be to eliminate duplication and over
tapping as much as possible and to create
an orderly system Of licensing control and busi-
ness inspection.
One Of the more controversial parts of the
plan is that which would do away with the
present Traffic Department. distributing its
licensing, inspection and engineering functions
among already operating departments. This
part will be opposed by many persons who feel
that it would be backward step to withhold
from the increasingly serious traffic field the
concentrated attention which Traffic Director
Keneipp and his staff have given it. Certainly
this and other controversial aspects of the plan
should have careful study before final action is
taken. But resistance to the plan merely be-
cause it will mean loss of prestige or personnel
in some quarters should have no bearing on
the decision. The "reorganization-is-go od-as-
long as-it- doesn't touch attitude is nor
NAL reaction, as the Federal reorganizers have
found out. The controlling factors ought to be
efficiency and economy in the interest of all the
public.