>Why do they even need to have access to production secure credentials during development? Why not let them fall into the "pit of success" so local development never talks to a production server anywhere?

Because most local governments are 10 to 20 years behind on anything remotely approaching best practices. It wasn't my choice to run things that way.

If it's hard enough for to tech companies to hire skilled developers, I can only imagine what the bar is for public work. They might even resort to hire some brain damaged people.

Here in Australia, only citizens can work for the Commonwealth (federal) government. The end result is that, due to a lack of competition from immigrants, the public sector is basically just a jobs program for those too incompetent to work in the private sector.

The same thing happens in the US with any jobs requiring security clearance.