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From Governing’s
Grading the Counties introductionFebruary 2002 issue
THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT
Report Card:
But while rapid growth often creates managerial and political confusion, Palm Beach has been relatively stable. It has had the same administrator for nearly a decade, and the board of seven county commissioners is businesslike and operates without much rancor or upheaval. Perhaps understandably, the county’s stability and economic strength sometimes mute the sense of urgency for management reform. “I was at a conference,” says Walter Munchheimer, the Palm Beach financial management director, “and they were talking about the techniques they were employing to get close to the best business practices. It was almost comical to say our biggest problem is that we have too much money. It’s hard to get people jazzed about working closer to the margins when you’re in that kind of environment.”
Actually, the most visible problems in Palm Beach County over the years have involved information technology — notably the county’s unsuccessful attempts to establish an integrated criminal justice system. In the 1990s, three vendors tried and failed to accomplish what the county wanted. The first went bankrupt. The second vendor, selling a heavily customized off-the-shelf product, threw up its hands and quit, agreeing to pay all costs. Then in 1997, the third contractor simply walked off the job, later losing in arbitration and reimbursing the county for its costs. At that point, the local government decided that a “big bang” approach to criminal justice technology was not a good idea, and broke the project up into separate court systems, the first of which went live in January.
As with many counties, the large number of separately elected political leaders has hampered efforts at modernization. In 1997, an IT office was set up under the Board of Commissioners, but it had no authority over the six constitutional officers. Even many of the agencies reporting to the commissioners retained their independent technology staffs and continued to maintain their own equipment. There have been a few promising efforts since then: In December 2000, for example, the county developed an entity-wide security policy, and some departments have agreed to merge staff positions into a central agency. Generally, however, the agencies remain separate fiefdoms for information technology purposes.
Positives: Solid structural balance; five-year financial projections; ample end-fund balance and built-in budgetary cushions; reasonable budget flexibility; good audit and control functions; investment policies and oversight in place; investment policy committee includes professional investment representatives from community; unusually high bond ratings for Florida county; centralized purchasing; good procurement and contract training and review.
Negatives: No formal rainy day fund; limited cost accounting; no formal fiscal note process or projections of accrued liabilities; no formal debt oversight or policy; no purchasing card; contracting sometimes marred by lobbyist influence.
Positives: Much-improved construction contracting and project management followed delayed opening of judicial center in mid-1990s; detailed six-year capital improvement plan with links to countywide strategic goals and operational budget; master planning process for facilities includes annual condition assessments; new pavement-management system implemented; maintenance funding has kept up with needs.
Negatives: Facility inventories lack some important information, such as energy efficiency and the cost of bringing facilities to good condition; technological weaknesses in tracking projects.
Positives: Flexible hiring practices; low number of grievances; relatively speedy appeals process; useful performance data; some efforts to determine employee satisfaction; integrated HR management system in development; online application system being implemented.
Negatives: Lack of unified personnel management among offices run by independent officials; high turnover; no full study of classification system since 1977; hiring can be slow; no strategic HR plan and no central workforce planning; central training poorly funded.
Positives: Long-term goals and agenda set in key areas, including health care, water resources and affordable housing; good outreach to citizens; good attention to performance audit and evaluation; county conducting comprehensive review of performance measures, with plan to increase results orientation; comprehensive land use plan serves as strategic planning document for some purposes.
Negatives: Departmental strategic planning not required, and quality varies widely; vast quantity of output data drowning out useful outcome measures; performance information difficult to find on Web.
Positives: Good, standardized GIS; some useful individual Web-based transactions, notably Property Appraiser’s Public Access System; training receives emphasis for technical staff within information systems office; new strategic IT plan in progress; many new Web-based transactions in development; staffing survey under way to determine number of IT employees throughout county government and on contractor payrolls.
Negatives: Fragmented technology structure; incompatible software, e-mail systems and duplicated help-desk functions; nightmare efforts to create integrated criminal justice system; training of departmental technology professionals spotty; project management needs more consistent approach; disaster backup plan shaky for some client server applications but good for mainframes.
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t 2,023 square miles, Palm Beach is geographically one of the largest of Florida’s 67 counties, and among the large urban counties, it is the wealthiest. It is also the fastest growing. During the 1990s, its population increased by 31 percent.