We are reminded, again, of the futility of thinking we had seen everything when it comes to the state’s bureaucracy. Nobody should ever fall victim to that thinking.
We got some information from a state department, division, board, or commission yesterday—we are obscuring which one because we are sure this was some kind of example of a condition we might politely call a “cranial flatus” and feeling uncharacteristically charitable toward the state bureaucracy in the spirit of the new year, we choose not to embarrass anyone. This feeling is unlikely to last very long.
We printed some information from this entity and saw the message:
“Thank you for printing our content at the Missouri Department of Agency.”
We immediately seized our 2013-2014 copy of The Missouri Register to see who was in charge of the Department of Agency but the Register did not list such a department. We conclude, therefore, that Governor Nixon must have issued an executive order after publication of the Register. He’s been known to issue executive orders realigning functions of government. Maybe this is the result of one of those.
The Department of Agency is reminiscent of some of the organizations that Garrison Keillor has talked about on his Prairie Home Companion broadcasts. Some of his broadcasts have been sponsored by The Associated Federation of Organizations and the American Society of Associations. His book, The Book of Guys, begins with a speech to the National Federation of Associations.
And there really is an American Society of Association Executives, which is probably as close as we’re going to get to a National Association of Associations.
So maybe a Missouri Department of Agency is not beyond the realm of possibility.