B&G REPORT.

Some time ago, in a conversation with a high-ranking county official, he told us about the three attributes that he sought when hiring a new employee: “attitude, aptitude and adaptability.” Subsequently in looking up those words online, we’ve realized that he didn’t make the “three A’s” up himself, but the idea remained with us as a sensible one. Clearly, the fundamental hurdles before someone should be hired for a job in state or local government are attitude and aptitude. I

For well over 30 years, we’ve been researching, analyzing and writing about state and local government for a whole variety of publications and organizations. Our most significant foray into this field began when we were covering management issues for Governing Magazine from 1997 to 2019. We left Governing at a time when it briefly appeared that it was going to cease publication, to do similar coverage for Route Fifty. We held onto that gig until 2024, at which point it cut ba

Many years ago, when we were involved in evaluating the management capacity of the nation’s largest cities, one of the areas of inquiry was performance management (which we then were calling “management for results”). This early exercise – one of the first in a line of work that ultimately led to the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Government Performance Project– was largely reliant on journalistic-style interviews, supplemented with a survey instrument. When we interviewed the people

It feels like just yesterday when, during the pandemic, we were writing about the potential of remote work to make employees happier without diminishing the services they provide. What’s more, it appeared that there was the potential for large amounts of savings when cities, counties and states could cut back at least part of the office space they used. Yet a growing number of state and local governments have eliminated or drastically reduced the capacity of employees to work