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Published on Friday, June 13, 2003
in the Tallahassee Democrat
When one Florida Highway Patrol trooper died in a fiery rear-end collision and another was badly burned in a similar wreck, Lt. James Wells felt the loss like any other cop - but he also put his engineer's mind to work.
His redesign of the gasoline-tank suspension and shielding mechanisms for the big police cruisers won Wells the $2,000 top recognition at the annual Davis Productivity Awards luncheon Thursday at the Civic Center. He was among scores of individual state employees and teams of workers whose extra effort, efficiency suggestions and innovations were credited with saving the taxpayers' money, recovering missed revenues or increasing agency output by $260 million last year.
"I hope it saves some lives, too," said Wells, who has been a trooper since 1982, after Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings presented the award. "I don't know how many of these rear-end collisions there are around the country, but our department had two last year. Ford did a survey and found that an officer doing paperwork on the side of the road is 1,000 times more likely than the average motorist to get hit in one of these collisions."
Fred Dickinson, director of the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, said Wells has an engineering degree "and he can find a solution for anything." The Davis citation credited him with showing Ford Motor Co. how to refit gas tanks, at a nationwide cost of $70 million for the company.
Wells said he approached Ford in 2000 after Trooper Robert Smith, an officer he served with in Naples, was killed in 1997 and Trooper Marisa Sanders was badly burned the following year in separate roadside accidents.
About 1,000 state employees - bosses, honorees and co-workers who turned out to applaud their colleagues - attended the first of five presentations scheduled across the state by Florida TaxWatch, the Florida Council of 100 and state agencies, who sponsor the annual awards. TaxWatch President Dominic Calabro said the benefits of this year's suggestions brought to $4.5 billion the total added value state government has realized in the 15 years that the Davis program has operated.
Like last year, many of this year's honors went to employees in homeland security, missing children programs and technology development.
The hazard-mitigation section of the Department of Community Affairs won for negotiating a contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which waived a 25-percent state and local matching requirement for disaster funds. That saved the state $31 million.
Matt Johnson and Ted Harrell of the Department of Children & Families and Hans Soder of the Department of Law Enforcement developed a missing-child reporting system that was hailed as a national model for inter-agency tracking of children. Jeremy Daniell in the State Technology Office coordinated purchase of Oracle software for four state agencies, saving about $1 million over three years.
Department of Corrections employees Chuck Manning and Bill Maust brought a small video camera to the stage and recorded a quick tribute to the third member of their team, Ken Fleming, who is on military duty in Kuwait. The three split a $300 award for devising ways to fill inmate work crews, providing cheap labor for state and local governments.
"We have a lot of outside work crews and we had trouble filling them," Manning said. "We had to match low-custody inmates with work details that needed to be done."
While Maust scanned the audience with his video camera, Manning had the crowd shout "Congratulations, Ken!" so they could send a copy of the tape to Fleming.
Jennings thanked the panel of judges from the public and private sectors who selected the 614 award-winning suggestions and achievements. She said the checks, plaques and certificates are a fitting tribute to state workers in a time of tough budget cuts.
"We all value everything you've done to make state government work better," she said. "That is what this is all about and it is just phenomenal."