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From Governing’s
Grading the Counties introductionFebruary 2002 issue
THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT
Report Card:
Mayor Alex Penelas’ recommendation for the next county manager was Steve Shiver, the 35-year-old mayor of the small town of Homestead. Without much professional management experience, Shiver was a constant target of media criticism during his first months on the job, but the attacks have died down. In fact, he is supporting many of the same management initiatives that his predecessor did.
Described by his employees as a “techno-geek,” he is focusing on the power of technology to change government. The county has embarked on a $20 million project to build its own fiber-optic network, rather than relying on third-party providers. A plan is under way to bring this network to low-income communities and, through several partnerships, to provide training and computers to poor families.
One of the major problems the government confronts is the distrust of citizens and press. Contracting — and the perceived power of lobbyists to influence contractor selection — has continued to be an issue here. Most recently, a grand jury probe of the $5 billion-plus rebuilding project at Miami International Airport has resulted in indictments of former airport officials.
Much of the activity targeted by the probe took place more than four years ago. Starting in 1997, changes have been put in place to clean up the government, including creation of an ethics commission and an inspector general’s office. All employees are now required to have ethics training. In addition, the county’s procurement is being centralized, and county ordinances have been tightened up. One example is a new “code of silence,” which prohibits potential vendors from communicating with competitors or county employees while a contract is being bid.
Positives: Spending cutbacks keeping pace with current shortfalls; good financial reporting; investment advisory committee and clear investment policies; five-year financial plan; consolidating procurement; increasing professional staff and training opportunities; good distribution of budget information to citizens.
Negatives: No formal debt policy; weakness in cash-flow analysis limits long-term investing; procurement can be slow; post-award contract administration needs greater vigilance.
Positives: Detailed six-year capital plan covering all county assets; some inroads toward better maintenance in recent years; regular condition assessment for facilities and roads; efforts to elicit local input helped with scheduling road projects.
Negatives: Significant unfunded capital needs, although proposed bond program may help; checkered history in keeping projects on budget and on schedule; major scope creep in airport expansion project, although plans scaled back post-September 11; slow selection and construction contracting process; preventive maintenance inconsistent; no formal upfront estimates of operating and maintenance costs of projects.
Positives: Workforce planning good for many departments; good use of technology for hiring and recruitment; flexible hiring; low turnover; good upward mobility; good use of probationary period; strong employee suggestion program; performance bonus for top managers; performance-related rewards for employees in several departments; aggressive and improving training.
Negatives: Outdated classification system; staff shortages in personnel; no central workforce planning; no integrated HR management information system; hiring can be lengthy; cumbersome discipline and termination process; frivolous grievances considered a problem.
Positives: Intensive strategic-planning process; all departments have business plans; effort to align departmental plans with overall goals; some departments disaggregate performance data to compare service in geographical areas; Efficiency and Competition Commission has resulted in multiple savings; customer service and “secret shopper” program initiated; multiple performance audits.
Negatives: Departmental business plans vary widely in quality — many still lack measurable performance targets; some departments resist administrative effort required for multiple MFR initiatives; efficiency and cost data are weak links; full MFR system not expected to be in effect until FY 2004.
Positives: Major improvements under way in fiber-optic infrastructure; integrated criminal justice system; new, continuously updated five-year strategic plan; new prorated funding of IT opens up county’s integrated GIS and Intranet to poorer departments; starting data sharing and standardization; big improvements in Web site.
Negatives: Historically decentralized environment causes redundancy and data-sharing problems, difficulty instituting procurement standards; legacy systems weak, especially for HR management, procurement and capital management; anemic IT project management, although efforts under way to upgrade training; cumbersome procurement process; local area networks hard to integrate; training of technology specialists short-changed; minimal evaluation of proposed IT systems; weaknesses in disaster-recovery planning.
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iami-Dade County, with a budget of $5 billion and nearly 30,000 employees, is an odd sort of hybrid. It has both an executive mayor and a county manager, who is nominated by the mayor and approved by the county commission. It sounds good in theory, but in practice it is sometimes tension-provoking. In late 2000, county manager Merrett Stierheim resigned, and rumors flew that the well-respected official had been forced out by a mayor intent on lessening the county manager’s role. Stierheim, who was manager in the county’s professional heyday of the 1970s, had been brought in to clean up a government that was marred by scandals in the 1980s and ’90s.