“I.O.P.”
Pima County Adult Probation, Assessment Center,
Pima County Superior Courthouse
Tucson, Arizona
Spring, 2009
I remember the exact moment it happened.
I was up in Phoenix attending a treatment coordinators' meeting for the Drug Treatment Education Fund (DTEF), with New Boss and a co-worker. I’m not a coordinator myself, but New Boss likes me to go to these quarterly meetings, unlike Old Boss who didn’t take me often. The last few DTEF meetings, I’d gone in her stead, for she was out of town dealing with dying family members. It was fun to represent the Department, telling truth to power and all of that, but that day, New Boss came along and I intended to keep my powder dry. Didn’t work out that way.
DTEF has paid my meager salary for the last 11 years. (I’ve take home less than $2000 a month, for the last decade.) The bulk of the DTEF money, however, goes toward providing substance abuse treatment money for those clients who are adult probationers, who have little means, and who have addiction problems. (Stats show that 85% of all convicted felons in Pima County have some level of substance abuse issues.) Most of my job over those years has been to make treatment recommendations for defendants who are either just about to be put on Probation or who are already on Probation. Originally, the test scores we gathered and the outcomes we arrived at, were part of the contract obligations that we, at Pima County Adult Probation, had with the State of Arizona, in order to get that pot of money. There were other strings too, treatment outcome results, termination dates, number of treatment sessions given, etc, but my biggie was to prepare the initial substance abuse treatment recommendations. I estimate I’ve done close to 20,000 of them over the last 11 years.
Here’s the problem. After I enter the results into a computer database, my work was pretty much ignored by everyone: Probation Officers (POs), the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), that judicial body in Phoenix that distributes the funds, the treatment providers, everyone. At one point, I estimate that, on a good month, maybe, just maybe, 5 to 10% of the POs looked at my assessments at all. It’s tough to have a job, in which you spend thousands of hours doing something, and you are basically irrelevant. I rationalized my meaningless job, by thinking that it paid me enough money to do Art, (Not really. I’m thousands of dollars in credit card debt trying to make my own Photo/Art/Writing/Music business successful.) and that my assessments kept the money flowing, to poor probationers who need some help with the cost of treatment. (True, because, for years for it was necessary to have the level of treatment recommended, entering into the State’s computer.) I plugged along, doing assessments that few read. I mostly paid my bills, both Art and otherwise, and I was reasonably happy.
Then AOC and/or The Legislature started taking this specifically earmarked DTEF money and giving to the State’s General Fund and other programs. The DTEF money came from a liquor sales tax, but over the years we, at Pima County, got less and less money. (Don’t tell me there are less people in Arizona and less people drinking in 2009, than in 1998.) A larger percentage of the DTEF money was simply going toward the salaries of four people in Pima County, and less going to help probationers who were trying to stop smoking Meth, snorting Coke or shooting Heroin. This began to really bother me about three or four years ago, but I plugged away.
Every 18 months or so, a new bureaucrat would ascend to the State position as Chief DTEF coordinator. I’ve lived through seven of them. Two were good. Two were mediocre. Three were absolute horrors. The latest may be the worst. We’ll call him Jack Powers. Jack is a perfect example of the Peter Principle at work: A Yes Man who has no balls, and who has terrible communication skills. Like the worst before him, he may be using this position as a stepping-stone toward a better, more powerful government job. He may only trying to make a small mark on the position to impress the next hiring board. He doesn’t care about the rank and file in the State’s 15 other Probation Departments or so it seems. He makes changes only so he can look good. He is not doing the Good Lord’s work. He’s an ass.
Jack doesn’t like me. I don’t blame him. The past three times I’d attended DTEF treatment coordinators' meetings, I’ve confronted his half-truths and flat-out lies about what treatments work best for probationers. I’m a fly in his government ointment, but that day, last spring, I thought I might have to keep calm, for New Boss would be with me and she doesn’t like it when I’m too confrontational. That lasted all of about five minutes.
Over a period of four hours, I must have said the sentence, “That’s not true,” at least a dozen times. “Alcohol and Drug Education is validated as an Evidence Based Practice,” said Mr. Powers. “That’s just not true, Jack,” I’d say. “We want to give you all the tools you need,” said Jack. “That’s not true,” I said. It went on like this for hours. I was furious.
Then Jack talked about how they were going to eliminate mandating treatment recommendations from the database. “Why, “ I asked. “Because.” said Jack, “We are finding that the treatment recommended isn’t matching up with the treatment that the client is receiving.”
“That because I’m recommending a higher level of care, than you give us money to provide. I recommend Intensive Outpatient Treatment, (IOP, usually three times a week), while we're only receiving money for Standard Outpatient Treatment.” (SOP, once a week, mostly a glorified Education class, for low risk offenders, which we mostly don’t have.) Jack just kept talking, continuing to ignore me as he had done all day.
I felt my anger shift to resignation. I was done. Stick a fork in me. I knew at that moment, I couldn’t continue to work for Pima County Adult Probation.
It was April 22nd, 2009, around 1:30 in the afternoon.
I thought I’d make it to September. I was wrong. I gave a month’s notice a week ago Friday. My last day will be July 7th. I have three weeks to go. I’ll be taking early retirement, getting a third of my salary and the ability to buy into the state employee’s health care plan for about $100 a month. which is a wonderful thing. I have six months of living expenses saved up, and opportunities to run substance abuse groups for providers in the community for twice to three times the hourly wage that I’m making now. But mostly, I going to go with gusto in the Art World, into my Art Work, and give it the Old College Try.
Things are far from perfect, mind you. My mother is dying of dementia. I’m ten pounds heavier than I like, coming from Lonely Eating late at night, and a cloud of low-level despair hovers over me, from staying at a bad job about three years too long.
But I have great hope for my future and for others as well. I have enough coin to make it until early 2010, a one-man show in the Fall, and a great gig in Phoenix this Summer, at a metaphysical conference to just be Stu, the Art Boy.
I’m hoping I’ll lose the weight over time and literally feel a little more comfortable in my own skin. I’ll probably lose my mother, in the next six months, and I pray I lose this low grade depression that’s come from Working For The County.
And I also guess that I’ll gain much more, in the coming years, than I can even imagine now. Yes, we are in a deep Recession. Yes, Art Sales have been down a lot, but I just have this strong intuition that what I’m doing, is not just the right thing, but the only thing. I’m 54, and I hear the clock ticking like a 35-year-old woman who wants a child. I’ve probably got 20 more years of healthy life left in me. Be goddamned if I’m going to spend half of that time at a meaningless job I hate, that pays me shit, and that has been slowing killing me for about three years now.
It’s time to jump off the cliff.
God, give me wings.
