Grading the Cities introduction THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT Report Card: Columbus Revenue Rank: 32 Form of Government: Mayor-Council Mayors: Gregory S. Lashutka (1992-2000), Michael B. Coleman (took office 2000) City Council: 7 members, elected at large FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT: B- Columbus likes control — maybe a little too much. When an agency wants to move funds from one broad category to another — say, from its personnel account to its services account — the agency has to get approval from the finance department, the city council and the city auditor. Any purchase over $10,000 must be approved by seven officials and the council. It’s not the most efficient way to do business. The process of projecting revenues out for the future is taken seriously here. “They look at the deficit number in the out years and it puts a cap on additions to the city budget,” says Wyatt Kingseed, the city’s finance director. Short-term revenue estimates are produced by the auditor (who has been in the same post for 30 years) and are intentionally conservative. “We do not use any regression analysis or any big models. He does it by his experience,” says Kingseed. Columbus’ economy has been booming, but the city has been careful even as the money rolls in. It has triple-A ratings from both Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service, and its surpluses have been used responsibly, building up a solid rainy day fund. When the city received a $13.3 million windfall refund from the state of Ohio on its workers’ compensation account, that money was also set aside, not added to the permanent budget base. One future concern is that the police and fire forces have grown dramatically in the past eight years, and much of the bill for that expansion has yet to come due. “They’re cheap in the beginning, but they jump up a grade every year, so the costs escalate quickly,” Kingseed notes. HUMAN RESOURCES: C- Two years ago, the city created a new human resources department, reporting to the mayor, and the department is just now gearing up to review all aspects of HR processing and policies. There is a lot to be done. First on the list should be work force planning. Columbus currently does none, and getting the data necessary to begin the effort will be very difficult. Personnel recruiting is almost non-existent, and the current decentralized work force environment allows poor performers to move back and forth easily between departments. On the positive side, the city recently completed a major civil-service reclassification, reducing the number of job classes by almost one-quarter. The testing process also has been improved: There is a new on-site testing center, and agencies are allowed to conduct examinations for many positions even if an official list of applicants is available. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: D+ Columbus hired its first chief technology officer in May 1998. Much of his initial effort focused on Y2K. Now, the city must redirect its effort toward addressing a host of problems connected to IT itself. Columbus has no official strategic information plan in place, although one is coming. Training for IT professionals has been way below par. Because IT staff are scarce, the tendency has been to keep them hard at work, rather than showing them how to work more efficiently. Meanwhile, the city doesn’t benefit from a great deal of information supported by technology. Except for a new financial management system, which is still in its buggy stages, the city lacks integrated systems to help make management decisions. And even though Columbus is looking at bringing in a much-needed personnel information system, the problem of integrating that data with the financial management data appears to be beyond current capacity. CAPITAL MANAGEMENT: B- The first comprehensive capital management plan in Columbus in 80 years was written in 1993. This land use and development document feeds into the city’s regular capital improvement plan, coordinated by the finance department. An interdepartmental working group also helps link plans across agencies. When possible, street repairs are coordinated with water and sewer line maintenance or replacement. New road construction is often linked with upgrades to the electricity distribution grid. Columbus has had a pavement-management system for several years, and it provides reasonably good data. The city is putting more resources into maintenance of both buildings and streets, and a recently approved bond package, coupled with increased gas- and light-tax revenues, should be helpful in street improvements. MANAGING FOR RESULTS: D The relatively flush economic conditions of the 1990s have left little sense of urgency about managing for results in Columbus. “We haven’t had the budget constraints,” says Kingseed. In their absence, he says, setting up planning, measurement and evaluation systems has been very difficult. Although Columbus lists departmental objectives in its budget, there are no measures attached to them. Efforts at utilizing these objectives as the cornerstone of a strategic plan have more or less fizzled out. That’s partly because the effort began late in the previous mayor’s term in office, and little effort was made to bring the city council on board. In fact, Columbus does nothing systematic with performance measures other than a customer satisfaction survey conducted in 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1998. The council does cite these surveys during budget preparation and the administration has used them as well. One other small effort to look at performance has been in evaluations done by the finance office. In 1999, there was an assessment of the city’s fleet operations, with recommendations on how it could be improved. AVERAGE GRADE: C Copyright © 2000, Congressional Quarterly, Inc. Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the publisher is prohibited. Governing, City & State and Governing.com are trademarks of Congressional Quarterly, Inc.