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From Governing’s
Grading the Counties introductionFebruary 2002 issue
THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT
Report Card:
But while Chicago still holds a majority of the county’s residents, it is actually just one of 132 municipalities inside Cook’s borders, and the county’s 21/2 million suburbanites comprise a bigger population than all but three American cities.
The county’s responsibilities are enormous — the budget is more than $2 billion — but the tasks are relatively straightforward. Ninety percent of the money is spent in two categories: the health care system, with three major hospitals and 30 clinics, and public safety, with the largest court system and the largest single jail in the United States.
What’s not so straightforward is the organizational chart. The services are delivered by nearly 100 different departments, and only 48 of them are under the control of the county board. The rest, employing about 12,000 of the county’s 27,000-person workforce, fall under the authority of independently elected officials. These leaders run their own hiring and recruitment shops, and there is minimal consistency in classifying and assessing the performance of their employees.
When it comes to technology, however, things are looking better. A strong CIO was appointed in 1997, and since then, the county board has begun to make significant investments in centralized IT systems. The state supreme court helped in this effort when it supported the board’s decision not to pay for an expensive mainframe that had been purchased by the clerk of the county court, against the board’s wishes. “It was an affirmation,” says the county’s chief financial officer, “that there is a purchasing process in place, and that regardless of whether you are an elected official or not, it needs to be followed.” One other sign of progress: A new financial information system will ultimately be used countywide, in contrast to the balkanized approach of the past, in which many offices had their own separate and incompatible systems.
Expensive union contracts make annual budgeting a chore here, but the board has held spending down in the past two years, in anticipation of a weakening economy. There is a new productivity initiative, which was launched in late 2000 and has yielded 117 suggestions for increasing efficiency and productivity. Some of these are now being implemented, although many will need the cooperation of the elected officials--an iffy proposition.
Positives: Revenue and expenditure estimates generally accurate; reserves healthy; investment policy in place; county developing formal debt policy; much-improved financial reporting with new computer system; county deserves credit for eliminating large structural deficit projected in mid-1990s.
Negatives: Unfunded pension liability rising, although still relatively small; some use of one-time revenues to balance budget in FY2002; no public long-term financial projections; board approval required at low level of $10,000 for all contracts; informal bidding required at extremely low level of $250; slow procurement; managers reporting to board lack flexibility to manage their own funds.
Positives: New $551 million hospital on budget and close to original schedule; monthly project-management reports; regular condition assessments for courthouses and administration buildings but not for health care facilities; well-maintained roads; five-year capital improvement plan, updated annually.
Negatives: Huge hospital project has squeezed out other needs; no formal cost estimates for bringing county government infrastructure to good condition; deferred maintenance still a problem, particularly for jail, although county has made good progress in catching up with deferred maintenance of early 1990s; limited citizen involvement.
Positives: HR strategic plan being developed; some workforce planning, although limited largely to short term; hiring process tightened up in recent years for departments under board’s control; county teamed with Chicago to provide new child care center for employees.
Negatives: Lack of consistent HR practices in hiring, recruitment, classification and performance appraisal, with elected officials independent of central HR office; no reclassifications of non-union positions permitted in past two years, very limited cash and non-cash mechanisms for rewarding superior employee performance; cumbersome disciplinary and termination processes; too many bargaining units.
Positives: County vision statement sets 23 overall goals; some effort made to tie department objectives to countywide goals; departments report performance measures quarterly; productivity improvements under study, although implementation of many still up in the air.
Negatives: MFR initiatives insufficiently linked to budgeting decisions; departmental performance measures vary in quality; communication of performance measures to public needs work; difficulty in linking employee performance to departmental objectives.
Positives: Much progress in past seven years; good cooperation in development of unified GIS; new financial management information system, with payroll module to be implemented in 2002; five-year strategic plan for IT, reviewed every six months; information sharing strong in law enforcement, although data inconsistencies inhibit sharing of court information; aggressive drive toward procurement standardization; improved technology training; strong CIO.
Negatives: Procurement process can be cumbersome; no computer-based training yet; weak Web site; human resources technology still diffuse, with many separate sub-systems; county IT heavily dependent on consultants.
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utsiders tend to think of Chicago and Cook County as being the same place, and appearances sometimes reinforce that impression. The county office building is, after all, the back half of Chicago’s City Hall.