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From Governing’s
Grading the Counties introductionFebruary 2002 issue
THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT
Report Card:
To be one of the five L.A. County supervisors, representing a district of gargantuan size and complexity, is to hold one of the most powerful positions in American government. The supervisors not only make crucial decisions that affect the lives of 10 million people — they each have large staffs that delve deeply into almost every issue they can find, often to the frustration of the county’s civil servants and managers, who feel heavily constrained by politics. The constraints are only getting worse as hard economic times encourage the board to take control of even more decisions in an effort to govern amid shrinking fiscal resources. In the end, much of the bureaucracy seems to accept this. “When finances are restricted and you want to be able to properly respond to your constituency,” one county finance official says, “you have to be in a micromanagement role.”
Elected leaders elsewhere in California are less tolerant of some of the county’s political and managerial eccentricities. They argue that L.A.’s micromanaging board stands in the way of good decision making and leads to over-politicization of issues that are more properly managerial in nature. They grouse that the county throws its weight around with the state legislature, and that when there’s money to be handed out, L.A. comes in first and everyone else second. “It’s hard to get a political pork chop in the state legislature past Los Angeles and to our county,” says one critic, “because L.A. has about a third of the state legislators. It’s a very large elephant.”
L.A.’s leaders acknowledge that their size helps them in the legislature but argue that’s simply the silver lining around a very dark cloud. “We are the ones being shortchanged when it comes to program areas,” one of the county’s administrators says. “The state doesn’t look at the unique requirements we have because of our huge urban area and diverse population. A large portion of our population falls under the federal poverty level, for example, and we are required to provide services to them. But many of the state’s formulas are based on population and wouldn’t differentiate between those under the poverty level and those that are well above it.”
Positives: Conservative revenue estimates; unreserved balances grew steadily during the past decade; efforts made to utilize surpluses for one-time expenditures only; county has reserved cash for huge utility-tax lawsuit; supervisors have good financial data; board generally knowledgable about fiscal detail of policy.
Negatives: Insufficient contingency reserve funds; no formal oversight body for debt, other than board of supervisors; more central oversight needed in procurement; inconsistencies in departmental contracting; no debt-capacity model, although one in progress; disparate accounting systems make activity-based cost accounting difficult.
Positives: Much citizen input into capital decision making; cost and funding of facilities projects well tracked; scope creep less a problem than in past; new inventory of facilities helpful; condition assessments for roads are adequate.
Negatives: About $1.6 billion in unfunded capital-improvement needs; inadequate maintenance funding for roads; maintenance backlog close to $2 billion, while county spending on maintenance is minimal; prioritization of projects stymied by sheer size of jurisdiction; no formal criteria to assess priorities; facility condition assessments far too infrequent; published capital improvement plan goes out only one year.
Positives: Superior workforce planning; innovative recruitment efforts; reasonable performance appraisal; new capacity to accept online applications; low overall turnover rate; grievance mediation process helpful; Los Angeles Training Academy — public/private partnership — aids training at all levels.
Negatives: Hiring is slow; too many positions vacant; inadequate non-monetary rewards; insufficient tie between performance and pay; discipline system needs improvement; appeals can make termination process difficult; too many classifications, although reduction under way; unions stand in way of broad-banding.
Positives: County working on entity-wide strategic plan, with effort to communicate goals widely; good communication of strategic-planning process to employees; departments now required to develop strategic plans, although without emphasis on common format; county developing report card on services, which will improve outcome measures; long history of performance measures in some departments.
Negatives: Departments not required to update strategic plans; quality of new plans varies; strategic-planning process lacks citizen input; inconsistent use of performance measures to evaluate employees; minimal use of citizen surveys; spotty use of outcome measures; targets infrequently used to drive performance; minimal training in use of measures for contracts.
Positives: New portal-based Web site with transactions being added; plans to replace old financial management and human resources IT with single system; good sharing of data countywide; strong draft of first IT strategic plan; good reviews of large new IT projects before funding is allocated; Information Technology Fund helps supply seed money for projects.
Negatives: IT system for financial processes antiquated; HR information system does little more than payroll; no countywide GIS; CIO has little genuine power; some large departments, including health and sheriff, resist centralized IT approach; no high-level post-implementation review of IT projects; procurement slow; little training of end-users.
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os Angeles is the most populous county in America. It has more residents than all but eight states, and its 4,081 square miles comprise more territory than Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Within its borders are 88 individual cities, but nearly two-thirds of the land remains unincorporated.