Grading the Cities introduction THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT Report Card: Detroit Revenue Rank: 7 Form of Government: Mayor-Council Mayor: Dennis W. Archer (took office 1994) City Council: 9 members, elected at large FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT: B- The transition between longtime mayor Coleman Young and successor Dennis Archer marks one of the most extreme contrasts in modern municipal history. Young was the managerial equivalent of Captain Bligh — maintaining tight personal control over documents and statistics and keeping virtually everyone else in the dark. Sometimes even the city council had to issue subpoenas to pry financial information loose from Young’s hands. Archer, by contrast, has a very open attitude (provoking a complaint among some that decisions take longer than they used to). Young would make up his mind instantly, without talking to anyone, while Archer likes to hear both sides first. Improvements have been abundant. The city has received nine upgrades from the bond rating agencies since 1994. Its pensions are in good shape. The administration has made sincere efforts to communicate budgetary and financial information to citizens. A new debt policy is currently being written. Still, Archer has not turned Detroit into the Emerald City. Contract management is weak. The rainy day fund could use some more cash. And revenue estimates remain vulnerable to political manipulation. The city council has the power to increase the estimates without much justification if it wants to spend more money. HUMAN RESOURCES: B- Detroit has improved considerably in this area as well. But it still faces enough obstacles to make a grown HR director cry. The city council prohibits advertising of city jobs in the local newspapers; many positions have a “rule of one,” which locks managers into choosing a single applicant for a vacancy; and the classification system has more job titles than New York, with about one-tenth of the employees. “Some of our rules pre-date my birth,” says Gary Dent, the human resources director. Perhaps the most impressive effort has been in work force planning, an area in which the city is now a national leader. Departments are required to start projecting three to five years ahead to see what their needs will be. Recruiting efforts are unusually strong. Local schools provide a “feeder” system to find occupants for hard-to-fill jobs. The city’s training department has made a huge leap forward — from a budget of $175,000 five years ago to more than $5 million today. There’s even an effort to pinpoint positions that are becoming obsolete — such as records clerk — to show employees that holding on to those positions can be a personal mistake. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: B- Detroit has a sensible information planning process that balances departmental thinking with the need for central governance. The IT department starts by trying to understand the agencies’ business requirements, then it figures out how technology can help. From there, a strategic vision for the city’s IT is developed. Of course, even the best-laid plans can go awry. Detroit desperately needed a new financial management information system for years. When city officials got the funding, they moved a little too fast. “We put in a system that typically takes three to five years in two years,” says Carl Bentley, the city’s CIO. The good news is that standard financial transactions — such as check-processing and collections — have improved dramatically. The bad news is that replacing an inefficient paper-based system almost overnight with a brand-new high-tech process resulted in glitches. “We had some situations,” says Bentley, “where it took longer to pay people, because the information wasn’t entered properly.” Meanwhile, plans for an up-to-date human resources information system have been delayed. Detroit simply lacks the resources to implement another big new piece of technology while trying to iron out glitches that the last one created. CAPITAL MANAGEMENT: C Detroit’s capital planning process is more than adequate. But it still faces an interesting challenge. The city’s population has fallen from 2 million in 1950 to around 1 million today. But all the roads and pipes are still there to be maintained. The biggest weakness in Detroit’s capital management is lack of adequate information. The city has no way of generating regular reports to track costs on major projects. Maintenance, too, has suffered from lack of information, and even when data is available, money is short. The city is now repaving about 100 miles of streets a year, compared with 10 miles a year earlier this decade. This works out to a 20-year cycle, which is too long, but much better than the 200-year cycle of a few years ago. “There is a gap,” says Ed Hannon, the city finance director, “between knowing what you need and having the wherewithal to do it.” MANAGING FOR RESULTS: B- Citywide strategic planning is in the fourth phase of an effort that began in Mayor Archer’s first term. Last summer, an overall strategic direction for the city’s allocation of resources was established, based on a leadership conference of department heads. Efforts are now being made to use performance measures throughout city government. Unfortunately, most of the measures are outputs, many of which aren’t particularly informative. Perhaps the strongest element of strategic planning is the effort to solicit stakeholder input. For example, when annual budget meetings were held in sections of town with large Mexican or Arabic populations, translation was provided. On one occasion, the city held a youth meeting, in which 150 students from seven schools attended. Their priorities, it turned out, focused more on recreational needs than on crime. AVERAGE GRADE: B- 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.