Free lectures" Lu Xiuyan has been in power for 8 years. "Grassroots official governance" in Zhongshi has fallen into decline and morbidity.

Since Taichung Mayor Lu Hsiu-yen has been in power for eight years, the city government team has frequently used the aura of "number one in the polls" to wrap up its governance.

However, behind the brilliant public relations figures, the "grassroots governance" of the Taichung City Government has long fallen into decline and morbidity.

The administrative crisis referred to here is not the traditional corruption and bribery, but the more corrosive "privacy theory overwhelms the civil service system." In a modern society governed by the rule of law, the promotion of civil servants should be based on professional assessment and performance. However, in grassroots agencies under the jurisdiction of the Taichung City Government Civil Affairs Bureau (such as district offices, household registration offices, health management offices, etc.), if grassroots affairs officers want to be promoted to district office section chiefs and other supervisory positions, the determining factor is not ability and performance at all, but whether there are "sufficient representatives of public opinion" behind them who can go directly to the director's office for entrustment. Without political backing, no matter how good a civil servant is, he has no chance.

This kind of behind-the-scenes operation of "promotion based on the mood of the people" may be said by some to be the inherent nature of local political ecology. However, if you compare it horizontally with other counties and cities, you will find that this phenomenon is unusual. Regardless of whether it is in the other five cities except Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan, and Taichung, and even in township offices in non-municipalities such as Yunlin and Changhua, the vacancies for section chiefs are publicly advertised on the "Shiqiuren" website of the Executive Yuan's Personnel Office. The only shortage of section chiefs in the Taichung City Municipal Office has been like a disappearing ghost on the "Seeking Jobs" website for many years. It is the only strange phenomenon in Taiwan that a dignified municipality turns the position of a grass-roots supervisor into a political bargaining chip for private exchanges.

When performance appraisal and integrity are no longer indicators of promotion, it becomes inevitable that bad money drives out good money. Under the protection of political relations, some people were given a major demerit for drunk driving, and some were given a B grade for improper dealings with manufacturers the previous year, but they were still successfully promoted to section chiefs the following year. What's even more shocking is that as long as the power of the people is strong enough, they can even force "Qiao" to take a vacancy - kicking out the section chief who was originally responsible for performing his duties, and making a special trip to free up the position for his designated person. This pathological trend of "it is better to find the right backer than to do things seriously" has completely trampled on the dignity of the civil service system.

If the city government is arguing that there are open job vacancies every year, how about a frank explanation: Are those open job openings all filled with positions with high turnover rates that no one wants to fill, such as civil engineering, social work, sports, etc., or personnel and accounting that fall under a one-stop system? How many unspeakable secrets are hidden in the lack of the real core local administrative director?

Paper cannot contain fire, data can speak for itself. As long as the Office of Personnel of the Executive Yuan consults the public recruitment data of various counties and municipalities in the past eight years, and through data analysis of grades, positions and public ratios, this personnel maze of "private giving and receiving" will be revealed. A sound civil service system is the bottom line of urban governance. When promotion of civil servants becomes a reward tool for politicians, it is still all Taichung citizens who ultimately bear the cost of poor governance quality.