one of the problems faced by many departments and other units has been the "yes you can hire", "no you can't", "alright, I guess it's ok" business.  in our department this put us in the position of either hiring a less than stellar candidate because no. 2 above caused us to lose whatever chance we had at anyone decent or hiring a visitor and hoping to keep the position.  We opted for the former as most of us won't be here longer than 5 more years and none of us wanted to face more sections and/or larger classes.  This isn't very admirable but if the place weren't being run by a bunch of d*#n fools we wouldn't be in this position.