On the federal level, partisan obstructionism has hurt our country. The latest example is the Republican-controlled Congress refusing to review the Democratic president’s nominee for United States Supreme Court as the Constitution requires.

We hate to see such paralyzing differences on the local level. Stand-offs hurt the citizens.

We wrote last week about the Berne town supervisor, Kevin Crosier, firing two town highway workers on March 11. He did it when the highway superintendent was out of town, on a trip to Maine, without telling him about it.

We can understand when town workers get laid off because they are failing to do their jobs well or because there is a lack of funds to pay them. Neither was the case here. Crosier himself pointed out to us how he had repeatedly praised the highway workers at town board meetings. And the highway superintendent, Randy Bashwinger, new to the post a year ago, has run the department efficiently and under budget.

Bashwinger is a Republican; the town board is entirely Democratic. Bashwinger believes the root of the problem is political. He said he wants residents to “see what crap politics this is.”

Crosier says it’s “a crazy idea” to think political differences are causing the rift. “I don’t look at him as a Republican,” Crosier said of Bashwinger. “I look at him as a highway superintendent.”

As the elected highway superintendent, Bashwinger should be able to schedule the 80 hours a week each of his six-member crews works in the way that is most productive.

Bashwinger, when the daylight hours are longer and the weather is favorable, likes to schedule his crew in 10-hour shifts four days a week. Crosier wants them to work five days a week in eight-hour shifts.

Bashwinger points to some impressive savings he has managed since becoming highway superintendent. From April to October in 2014, the town paid $9,700 in overtime; during the same period in 2015, the town paid a little over $400 in overtime. Crosier asserts that the savings came from part-time workers. Because part-time workers don’t get benefits, Crosier said, “We pay them $16 an hour versus $40. “

But Bashwinger said the great majority of overtime work is for paving, which part-time workers don’t do. Rather, working from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. — instead of starting at 6 a.m. like the full-time workers — the part-time workers mow, flag traffic, change signs, and fill potholes.

The highway workers told us they prefer the 10-hour shifts. In fact, they turned down an offer in contract negotiations that included a 2-percent raise this year if they would agree to have the four-day weeks limited to eight.

So — the workers prefer the 10-hour shifts, they accomplish more, and the town saves money.

Why would anyone object? Crosier says, “This is outrageous and unacceptable. Some moms and dads are working two jobs. How will they feel if the highway department is closed?”

Bashwinger points out that the town hall is closed on Fridays. It’s typical of small towns to do the best they can with the resources and workers they have.

But, still, Berne’s highway workers came up with a solution to Crosier’s objection that it is unacceptable to have the highway department closed on Fridays. On their own, they agreed to a schedule where three of them would work Mondays and three of them would work Fridays. This would keep the department open every weekday and still allow for the more productive, cost-saving long shifts.

They were turned down.

When Bashwinger had the town clerk send an email to the town board members giving notice that he planned, with the warm weather and longer hours of daylight, to resume the 10-hour shifts, Crosier replied that same day, “I am afraid we will have to review this and make a decision that may make some unhappy….”

When Crosier then delivered letters to the two workers with the least seniority — “On behalf of the town board and the taxpayers of the town of Berne thank you for your past service,” he wrote — Crosier said he told them the town board cannot carry six full-time workers who are only there four days a week. Asked what it would take to get the two men back to work, Crosier told The Enterprise that either Bashwinger could decide not to schedule months of compressed workweeks or “the guys as a group” could decide.

By Crosier’s own figure of $40 an hour per worker (about half in salary and the other half in benefits), the sudden dismissal, without the 10-day notice required by the union contract, would cost the town $6,400.

That’s a lot of taxpayer money to spend to strong-arm workers to your will. And it doesn’t even count the human cost.

Both of the men have families with children to support. They’ve been praised for their work. Like their co-workers, they have done much that is not part of their job description — currently doing construction work to expand the outdated and overcrowded highway garage.

They did not deserve to be fired. They had no inkling the layoffs were coming, no time to plan or find other work. “I was in shock,” one of them told us.

We were shocked, too. Would these workers feel compelled to do what isn’t best for them or for the town so that they can keep their jobs?

Our story about the layoffs was printed last Thursday after being posted on our website the day before. On Friday afternoon, Crosier offered the two men he had laid off their jobs back. They were at work on Monday. Asked if they were re-instated without having to agree to the five-day workweek, Crosier answered, “We have a pending agreement with the union. That’s all I can say.”

Crosier, who used to work as a firefighter for the city of Albany, said an old captain had told him, “This is public service, not self service.” Both Crosier and Bashwinger were elected to serve the public. They need to work together and communicate with each other to do so.

Bashwinger says that, at the budget hearing last fall — his first — there was no mention of the town board cutting two posts. Yes, he should have read each line, but shouldn’t it also have been talked about?

And what about the town councilmembers? They, too, are elected to serve the public yet most have remained publicly silent about this.

Bashwinger had an email sent out that he was returning to compressed workweeks on March 28 but did not mention this to anyone on the town board. Crosier then proceeded to lay off two of Bashwinger’s six-man crew without saying a word to the man elected to run the department.

That left Bashwinger short-handed with routine projects never mind putting the public in peril if there should be a March snowstorm. Cleared roads are essential not just for convenience and commerce, but for safety as well. Bashwinger said Crosier hadn’t told him the workers were re-instated either.

How is any of this serving the public?

Bashwinger called our newspaper Monday to say citizens had organized a march on Town Hall for Wednesday, including Republican candidates for State Assembly and Congress. “Many people decided the town board needs to hear what’s going on with the dirty politics,” said Bashwinger. We caution against further political divisiveness.

We would hope, at the local level, our elected leaders would be able to talk to each other and work things out for the common good, and eschew the sort of posturing and gridlock presently practiced at the national level.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer