My wife works in municipal government and there does seem to be a mentality on the positive side that while you won't make as much, your job is very secure and you are entirely off the clock after 5pm (except for very specific days), but on the negative side some people take advantage of that and will not do any extra work no matter how minute and become almost completely useless but not quite useless enough to get fired.

And then there are things that I do or buy that I don't think twice about, whereas she would have to convince so many people for approval or it might technically be illegal to do the same thing.

Sometimes it feels like towns and cities could be so much better if they paid just a little bit more. Doesn't have to be the same as the private sector, but they'd open up themselves to such better candidates if they paid a couple grand more across the board.