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| JULY 2007 This month features a piece from new Management Letter contributor Ken Miller. Ken is a national expert on managing change and innovation, and he's the author of We Don't Make Widgets. This month, he's tackling the question of how you can bring about change when you're not the boss. Also in this issue, Girard Miller discusses three hot issues regarding pensions, including the movement toward socially-conscious investing -- and its unintended consequences. And the newest B&G Report includes a look at Alabama's roads, expensive logos, phantom legislative bills, along with an interview with former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise. |
 Guerrilla Warfare By KEN MILLER For The Governing Management Letter When you want to create change but you're not in charge, you have only one option: Go underground. Pension Divestment and Fiscal Sanity By GIRARD MILLER For The Governing Management Letter Social investing is an idea with good intentions, but states have yet to get it right. Funding Benefits With Pension Profits By GIRARD MILLER For The Governing Management Letter Public agencies can convert pension-fund surpluses into seed money for "other post-employment benefits," or OPEBs. A Possible Benefits Crackdown By GIRARD MILLER For The Governing Management Letter A California taxpayers' group has filed a ballot initiative that would control public employee pension benefits in the state. SIGN UP NOW! 
Hear from the best experts in management -- including Management Letter contributors Ken Miller and Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene. 
In MANAGEMENT INSIGHTS, some of America's top experts share their perspectives on getting the most out of government. The online-only column, a collaboration between Governing.com and Harvard University's Government Innovators Network, is updated every Wednesday. This week's topic: Can you really manage innovation?
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Coming in October: Measuring Up 2.0: Governing’s New, Improved Guide to Performance Measurement for Geniuses (and Other Public Managers) updates and builds on the lessons of the best-seller that took the mystery (and the tedium) out of using performance measurement in government. Pre-publication orders are being accepted now. For more information, |
Katherine Barrett
& Richard Greene |
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- Exclusive - We clearly struck a nerve last month when we asked you to send us words and phrases in public sector jargon that set your nerves on edge. The e-mails started to come in two minutes after the B&G Report was delivered, and kept coming (though at a slow trickle, now). Many of you have probably seen the logo that was designed for the 2012 Olympics in London. For those who haven't, the thing looks unsettlingly like a swastika. It cost $800,000 to produce and -- after the hoopla that attended its unveiling -- is being redesigned. Here's our two cents: While we like pretty logos as much as the next guys, we think this business of spending large sums on them is a waste of cash for governments -- and for private-sector firms as well. KEEP READING The Philadelphia Productivity Bank has long been considered a great success. Since its inception in the early 1990s, it has provided loans to city agencies for initiatives that cost money in the short run but save money long-term -- like a new computer system in the revenue department that helped cut delinquent taxes dramatically. Other governments have seen its value and emulated it. We knew it. Back in our college days, one of us worked at the music library at Northwestern University. We won't mention which one, but it was the male half of our partnership. Anyhow, this person also had a terrible habit of keeping library books way overdue. But when the libraries computerized, he discovered that he could adjust the dates online and pay a nickel or a dime instead of two or three dollars. Turns out, according to an auditor's report, Seattle employees are up to the same tricks. KEEP READING Just a few days ago, we came across an Alabama newspaper article lamenting the results of a recent Reason Foundation study that "analyzed data collected on state-maintained roads throughout the country and ranked Alabama 43rd, down from 11th place in 2000." Let's establish from the outset that we have only a layman's understanding of some financial techniques that are common in the public sector. Leading the list of things we don't really understand fully are derivatives and interest-rate swaps. But here are a few things we do understand: For a while now, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board has been talking about the need for more transparency in their use. That makes sense to us, since it's our guess that an awful lot of legislators don't understand these tools any better than we do. Oregon, through its Progress Board, was one of the first states to take big steps forward on benchmarking, performance measurement and strong strategic planning. You'd have thought that Oregon would have had its greatest impact -- outside of the state itself -- inspiring other states as well as cities or counties to learn from its efforts and then innovate. Thanks to property tax reform in Florida, most of the state's localities are searching far and wide for ways to cut back. They have our sympathies. As in all states, Florida 's communities face a variety of long-term pressures that make it especially tricky to keep budgets under control. While we were poking around Florida to learn a little more about its property-tax problems, we came across a Web site that we wanted to pass along. It was created by the Florida Legislative Committee on Intergovernmental Relations. We've talked with a lot of people in government over the years about their deep yearning for more information about intergovernmental policies and practices, and this looked like an unusually solid legislative effort in that direction. When we were kids -- and far more recently than that -- the only thing we knew about Red Hook, Brooklyn, was that you didn't want to go there without a bodyguard. Today, the largest police precinct in this section of New York City is one of the safest. Our favorite piece of government management esoterica appeared in the Albany Times Union a few weeks back. The short article takes note of the fact that in the New York State Assembly, no bill is numbered lower than A00026. There's no A00025 or A00016 and so on. In the Senate, apparently, the lowest bill numbers are reserved for particularly important legislation. Why these phantom bill numbers in the House? The full B&G Report | Who are Barrett and Greene? |
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