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Over the years in which we’ve been covering the evolution of performance management, it’s always been abundantly clear to us that great care needs to be taken in determining the right things to measure. We’ve long suggested that states and local governments need to consider the set of performance measures they use as a work in progress—and be prepared to refine and alter them on a regular basis. With that in mind, we were struck by a working paper, published by the Anneberg Institute at Brown University (to which we were alerted in an article in Education Week) that questions the value of linking school principals success to test scores. As the paper concluded: “We find that using contemporaneous student outcomes to assess principal performance is flawed. Value-added models misattribute to principals’ changes in student performance caused by factors that principals minimally control. Further, little to none of the variation in average student test scores or attendance is explained by persistent effectiveness differences between principals.” That’s pretty strong language. The Education Week article puts this finding into context with a quote from Brendan Bartanen, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of education policy at the University of Virginia. “This is not a study that says that principals are not important. Principals are absolutely important,” he said, adding that “we need to be very careful about trying to infer the performance of a principal on the basis of the [test-score] outcomes of students.” One of the paper’s major findings was that principals – while they hold a great deal of power over the functioning of a school – are not the primary drivers of test scores. As a result, they shouldn’t be penalized if test scores drop or rewarded if they rise, as is sometimes the case. As the paper said, “Specifically, while we find meaningful within-school variation in student test score performance when comparing across principals . . . this variation is driven by transient school factors that are likely to have occurred regardless of who was leading the school. Because these school factors exhibit some persistence across years, they create the illusion of principal effects. . . “ We believe that it’s inevitable that measures like this one are frequently used – without necessarily proving that they’re the best ones – simply because the data is so easy to come by. There’s a powerful incentive to the people who have the task of coming up with measurements to grasp at metrics that are seemingly meaningful and are easy to find without a more complicated process like seeking input. That’s understandable but it’s a flawed approach and is reminiscent of this old joke: So, a man came across a friend of his searching in the street for something he had evidently lost. “What’re you looking for?” the friend asked. “My wallet.” “Oh, and did you drop it on this block?” “No, I think I lost it in the alley, but the light is better here.” #PerformanceManagement #CityandCountyManagement #PerformanceMeasurement #AnnenbergInstitute #EducationWeek #SchoolPrincipals #TestScoreValidityinPerformanceMeasurement #MeasuringPrincipalSuccess #BrendanBartanen #TestScoresasaPerformanceMeasure #SchoolPerformanceMeasurement #PerformanceMeasurementPenaltiesandRewards #PerformanceMeasurementSelection #StateandLocalGovernment #StudentOutcomes #SchoolPerformance #SchoolPerformanceMetrics #BrownUniversity #PerformanceMeasurementPitfalls #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformanceMeasurement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformanceManagement

by Marty Benison, Industry Executive Director for State and Local Government, Oracle ​ While the move to “Software as a Service” (SaaS) started prior to the pandemic, it accelerated when citizens needed to continue to do business with governments at all levels, but now they’ have to do so remotely. ​ This digital transformation is now ingrained in the fabric of most government organizations and is here to stay. This is good news. Moving systems to SaaS subscription models, taking advantage of artificial intelligence, robotics and the Internet has allowed government organizations to remain productive and is now positioning all facets of the public sector to better deal with the loss of millions of workers through retirement that is underway. ​ While risk mitigation strategy discussions have long been a standard part of strategic processes for state and local governments, it is important to recognize that digital transformations bring with it new risks and require a fresh look at mitigation strategies. A recent Route Fifty column, (by Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene), documents not only the financial consequences of government fraud but the loss of trust. When I was comptroller of Massachusetts, I frequently cautioned my team that reputations in government are hard earned but quickly destroyed. As their article points out, this reputational damage can quickly spread beyond one individual to a government as a whole. ​ The good news is that with these new technologies comes the opportunity to implement an Enterprise Risk Management system (ERM) which can help offset the chances of a government’s suddenly being publicized as the victim of a fiscal fraud. But what is ERM and what are the benefits of ERM? What Is Enterprise Risk Management? Enterprise Risk Management is a process that helps an organization to achieve its mission or the strategic goals that make up the overall mission without being derailed by the negative impacts of risk events such as internal and external fraud, cybercrime, or natural disaster. Left unmanaged, these events can prevent the organization from achieving its strategic goals. Implementing an ERM system will help to better prepare for risk events and when they do occur, ERM can help to limit their impact on government services. Keys To a Successful ERM Implementation There are a number of factors that will impact the success of an ERM implementation. These include: ​ Ensuring that top leadership are fully behind the project Choosing a high-quality Enterprise Resource Planning system that has an embedded Enterprise Risk Management platform Ensuring that staff see the ERM as a program that is easy and aids success, not one that adds work or aims to apportion blame Creating a culture that encourages and rewards the identification of risks and a transparent and balanced approach to risk acceptance or mitigation Ensuring that these factors are in place before implementing an ERM framework will help to increase the success of the program. The Benefits of Enterprise Risk Management Implementing an ERM program can provide a wide range of benefits for state agencies, which can include both qualitative and/or quantitative benefits. ​ Creation of a more risk focused culture When management increases the focus on risk, it results in more discussion about risk at all levels of the agency. This in turn means that risks are identified more easily and managed more effectively. Staff become more open to sharing risk information, which leads to better decision making around risk at all levels of management. Security and compliance are improved Ensuring that the agency’s Enterprise Risk Management application is well designed and well maintained helps to future-proof the security of the agency. This is vital to helping ensure that state agency systems remain protected against rapidly evolving cyber-attacks and unauthorized financial transactions. Choosing an ERM framework with automated controls will allow state agency management to access real-time evidence, making the compliance and audit process more efficient. Efficient resource usage State agencies without an ERM system may need to employ large numbers of people to manage and report risk on a day-to-day basis. Implementing ERM doesn’t entirely replace the need for this, but it can improve the efficiency of state government services by allowing critical risk management functions to be carried out consistently. When the ERM system is embedded in an ERP system, monitoring of moderate risks can be mostly automated. Processes can be streamlined and eliminating redundant processes in this way allows resources to be used more efficiently. Audit samples can be replaced with 100% real time audit for risk transactions. Improved perspective on risk ERM systems provide key metrics and measurements that assist the monitoring of risk vulnerabilities as they develop. Being able to track changes in this way allows early identification of changes to the agency’s risk profile, providing an early warning system for potential risk events. The data generated by the Enterprise Risk Management tools also empowers state agencies to make better risk-aware decisions. Standardized risk analysis and ERM reporting ERM provides a variety of data including the status of key risk indicators, emerging risks, and mitigation strategies. ERM risk reporting is quick, flexible, and detailed, which allows state agency leadership to develop a better understanding of the agency’s risk profile, thresholds, and tolerances. This in turn gives a better framework for evaluating risk, allowing better decision making at all levels of management. It will also vastly simplify compliance and audit storing all the current risk and mitigations in a single up to date format. Implementing a state level ERM framework can lead to better management of risk, which has many clear benefits, including empowering employees to take a more positive and proactive attitude to risk identification and mitigation. Will any technology eliminate all risks? Or course not. But, as the old saying goes, “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” ​ The contents of this guest column reflect those of the authors and not necessarily those of Barrett and Greene, Inc. ​ #PerformanceManagement #StateandLocalDigitalTransformation #PublicSectorFraud #GovernmentTrust #TrustinGovernment #GovernmentFraud #EnterpriseRiskManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentTransparency #RiskFocusedCulture #StateGovernmentEfficiency #PerformanceMeasurement #RiskManagement #StateandLocalGovernment #Cybercrime #Oracle #MartyBenison #SofwareasaService #RouteFifty #StateofMassachusetts #StateandLocalGovernmentLeadership #StateandLocalGovernmentFraud

Some years ago, when the phrase “big data,” was first gaining currency, we decided that before we embarked on any projects related to this new silver bullet, we should figure out what it meant. So, we got on the phone and spoke with a dozen smart people we knew in state and local government, asking nothing more than for a definition of that phrase. It turned out that we got at least six different variations on the theme, and there was no real clarity as to what big data really was. More recently, when we were interviewing an expert in the realm of artificial intelligence, the first question we asked was something like: “Can you define AI?” Our source was finally able to come up with a broad definition, but it took a good five minutes of going back and forth to accomplish that. The unquenchable thirst for the solutions to all things has led, we believe, to a tendency to throw around exciting glittery verbiage without any reason to be confident that everyone concerned knows exactly what anyone else is talking about. This doesn’t have to be the case. During an interview with Buncombe County, North Carolina County Manager Avril Pinder, for a column in Route Fifty she told us a story of her quest for clarity. She had a mandate for the county to become a “value-driven” organization. But before she leaped into that task, she and her team “sat down with commissioners in order for them to determine exactly what was meant by “values,” for the county. “And then we had the organization define those values,” she told us. Now, Buncombe County understands that when people are driving toward values, they’re aiming at respect, integrity, collaboration, honesty, and equity. Pinder didn’t stop there. She made certain that there were shared definitions, based on employee input, for what those individual words meant in the county. But Pinder’s quest to pin down shared definitions for important words and phrases isn’t common, as far as we can see. And that’s too bad. Lately, for example, we see the word “agile government,” being used with great frequency, and it’s pretty clear that a lot of people genuinely understand the meaning of that phrase. But we fear that it’s become such a common set of two words that a lot of people want to apply it to anything they’re working on, because what could be wrong about being “agile?” As we were writing that last paragraph, we decided to Google the phrase “agile government,” to see what we came up with. Here’s what popped up on the top of our screen: “Agile government calls for test-driving various methods and tools in a variety of realms—be it procurement, governance, or workforce—using sandboxes, policy labs, and other innovative techniques. Build a broader ecosystem. The necessary technical know-how often resides outside of government.” Or we could pick out about a dozen other definitions that are all just a little different. Even words and phrases that genuinely have clear, technical definitions are often misused out of carelessness or a disregard for precision. As we wrote, in early April, “When you see mentions of surpluses in the press right now, it’s more than likely that the word is being misused.” Our point? Surpluses don’t exist until the end of the fiscal year when budgetary dollars are left over, yet the word was being used back then to describe unanticipated revenues. We put up a post on LinkedIn about this B&G Report, and got the following salient comment from Terry McKee, director of procurement at Knoxville’s Community Development Corporation, “Unfortunately press releases and press conferences seldom define such terms. They should and reporters should research terms before mindlessly using them.” #PerformanceManagement #StateandLocalGovernment #PublicSectorData #ArtificialIntelligence #GovernmentOversight #CityandCountyManagement #StateandLocalMedia #BuncombeCounty #StateofNorthCarolina #CountyManagerAvrilPinder #GovernmentJargon #StateandLocalGovernmentJargon #AgileGovernment #TerryMcKee #CityofKnoxville #KnoxvilleCommunityDevelopmentCorporation #InconsistentDefinitionsinthePublicSector

Our friend and colleague Harry Hatry has long insisted that data is far more valuable when it’s disaggregated. In a January 2022 paper for the Urban Institute which we were honored to co-author with him, he maintained that performance data is particularly useful when you “compare the outcome values broken out (disaggregated) by demographic characteristics (e.g., by age group, race/ethnicity, gender, education level, and location—such as neighborhood, state, or other geographical location).” Much more recently, Michael Jacobson, director of Performance and Strategy at the King County Office of Performance Strategy and Budgets pointed us to an adage he once heard: "Aggregate to communicate and disaggregate to manage." These lessons are brought into start relief by a just released report by the Census Bureau that will stop us from ever thinking that the median population of states is a truly meaningful figure. The title of the report gets right to the point: "New Census Bureau Visualization Shows Broad Variations in Age." Consider Florida. Its median age in 2021 was 42.7, somewhat higher than next-door neighbor Georgia with a median age of 37.5. But does this mean that all of Florida is a place where retirees tend to go for low taxes and sunny weather? Not really, if you visit Leon County, with a population approaching 300,000. That county, home to the state capital, appropriately named for explorer Ponce de Leon, who is said to have sought the Fountain of Youth, has a median age of 32.1. By wild contrast, Sumter County, Florida, has a median age of 68.3, the highest of any county in the country. No surprise there. Sumter County is effectively little more than the home of The Villages, a master-planned age-restricted community with 130,000 people and virtually no children. Florida is not unusual, as the Census Bureau points out. Median ages ranged from county to county in practically every state. South Dakota, for example, had an extremely low median age of 23.0 in tiny Todd County, primarily home to Native Americans compared to 56.3 in Custer County. These age ranges are of consequence for a number of reasons. For example, when states distribute finances to counties based on their total populations, it might be wise for them to take the individual counties’ median ages into account. Consider the funding that went out to counties to help them deal with Covid vaccinations, particularly in the early days of the pandemic. Given the greater likelihood of hospitalizations and deaths among older people, it would have made simple sense to look at these disaggregated figures and spend more in the counties with higher median ages. Lumping people together into any monolith is often misleading, and age is only one example. A couple of months ago, Laura Zhang Choi, a Warren County school-board member testified to New Jersey legislators that the state would be well served by breaking down the component parts of New Jersey’s Asian American residents, according to an article in Verve Times. She pointed the legislators to New York City as a powerful example, and according to the article she told the legislators that, “about 11% of city residents suffer from diabetes, and the rate among Asian Americans is roughly the same at 12%. But a deeper look showed an alarming figure for Indian Americans, nearly double the city average at 21%. That information disappeared when all Asian ethnicities were lumped together.” The importance of disaggregation – for many other factors – was clearly spelled out in a recent podcast featuring Amy O’Hara, Research Professor in the Massive Data Institute at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy. As she explained, “When we think about the way that our communities are reflected in data, the biggest regular data collection is a decennial census. Every 10 years information is pulled together about every single resident in the United States. And for that information, in order to do apportionment, you say, how many humans are there in the U.S. and that’s adequate for that purpose. “But then, you really want to start breaking it down. What are the characteristics of these people? How many are male? How many are female? How many are old? How many are young? And you get these disaggregations of the data that were collected. The aggregate information is useful, but depending on what your policy question is, it’s not going to be useful enough.” #PerformanceManagement #StateandLocalGovernment #Equity #PublicSectorData #CityandCountyManagement #PerformanceMeasurement #DisaggregatedData #MichaelJaccobson #KingCounty #Disaggregation #UrbanInstitute #Covid #CensusBureau #PerformanceData #DataDisaggregation #KingCountyOfficeofPerformanceandStrategy #DataVisualization #StateofFlorida #StateofGeorgia #StateofSouthDakota #StateofWashington #StateofNewJersey #NewYorkCity #StateofNewYork #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformanceMeasurement #McCourtSchoolofPublicPolicy

by Diana Urban, former Chair of the Connecticut General Assembly Committee on Children, presently founder and president of Protecting Kids and Pets Partnership ​​ Buffalo, Sandy Hook, Uvalde, Parkland, Columbine, Pearl High School. Terrible tragedies and many opinions as to what went wrong. Anguished cries about red flags that were ignored, including mental health issues, early childhood trauma, social media posts, the availability (or straight up purchase) of high-powered weapons. The list of potential causes and early warning signs of future mass shootings continues to grow. But wait a second. There is one red flag that ties all of these massacres together, and that is a history of animal cruelty. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Helpless, voiceless creatures with no line of defense become the first victims of these tortured minds. Society’s reaction to such acts of violence against animals? Typically, it’s a slap on the wrist, if that. I have spent a good part of my legislative career pointing out this link between animal cruelty and future violent behavior towards people. When I was in the Connecticut legislature, I had some success passing legislation that addresses the issue. Known as “Desmond’s Law” it was enacted in October of 2016. The first law of its kind in the nation the statute puts a pro bono lawyer or a law student under the supervision of a law professor in court to advocate for justice for the dog or cat victim of egregious abuse. Recently the court expanded the law in a case involving terrible cruelty to rabbits. Preliminary empirical evidence is very clear and the courts are taking animal cruelty much more seriously. There is no “get out of jail free’ card any more. Other states have been considering similar legislation and Maine did so when it passed “Franky’s Law,” in 2019. But on a national scale, this is just a small start. Each time I see another massacre where the shooter started with animal cruelty that went completely unaddressed, my heart aches. Children could have been saved by simply recognizing that animal cruelty is an act of violence, before the perpetrators murder children, teachers, grocery store patrons, church goers, concert attendees, post office workers. There are many graphic incidences of violent cruelty to animals that preceded acts of violence toward people. Even though the FBI recognizes animal cruelty as a discreet offense that it now tracks, government—and society—have been painfully slow in recognizing animal cruelty as a key red flag. New York’s red flag law (known as “extreme risk protection laws”) rests on the recognition that a person is a danger to themselves or others and bars them from obtaining a firearm. Nowhere does it mention that a history of egregious animal cruelty should be included in the determination of what constitutes a red flag danger. A person can starve or strangle a dog to death, throw a kitten against a wall, beat a dog on the head until it’s unrecognizable and at most might be placed in a meaningless, useless diversionary program, which typically involves periodically calling in to a probation officer. So what was the case with these two recent horrendous massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde? Both shooters (and I deliberately do not mention their names) had not only a history of animal abuse but also posted their twisted acts on social media. The Buffalo shooter made videos of himself abusing animals, which included cats that he killed. The Uvalde shooter stabbed a cat in the neck until the cat was decapitated. He also posted his “kills” on social media. There seems to be a political willingness on both sides of the aisle right now—both nationally and at the state level--to at least consider red flag laws as a way to help prevent a school shooting or other mass violent event. If those laws don’t prominently include animal cruelty in the list of early warning signs, then it’s likely that many more children and adults are going to needlessly and tragically die. ​ #StateandLocalGovernment #PerformanceManagement #StateLegislation #DianaUrban #AnimalCruelty #ProtectingKidsandPetsPartnership #SchoolTragedy #AnimalCrueltyViolenceLink #DesmondsLaw #AnimalCrueltyLegislation #RedFlagLaw #FrankysLaw #StateofConnecticut #StateofMaine #SchoolShooting

While pensions and retiree health liabilities garner lots of headlines as dramatic fiscal threats, a less-publicized, but still critical concern is leave liability -- the amounts that are paid out for unused sick or vacation leave to departing employees. We researched and wrote about this issue in a 2021 report for UKG, called Employee Leave in the Public Sector: Current Challenges and Solutions. We're focusing on this today, thanks to a powerful new comptroller's review in New Jersey that points to the municipalities in that state's failure to comply with laws pertaining to leave, "leading to both actual waste and abuse of public funds, as well as substantial future liabilities for these municipalities.” But first a little background: “No leave issue is more of a fiscal threat to governments than ‘Leave liability’,” we wrote in the UKG report. “Unused leave represents an often-escalating unfunded liability that comes due when employees retire or otherwise sever their relationships with their government employers.” Over the years, governments have passed various laws that attempt to limit this liability. New Jersey tried to do this in 2007 with legislation that added a $15,000 cap to the amount of sick leave that could be accumulated for senior employees, a rule that was extended in 2010 to all employees hired after May 1 of that year. There were also other elements to these laws that barred annual payouts and payouts that were made when employees left government for reasons other than retirement. They also included some provisions on payouts for unused vacation time. But policy doesn’t necessarily yield results when it is not implemented well – a problem uncovered this month by New Jersey’s acting comptroller, whose investigation of leave payouts in 60 New Jersey cities and towns found that many aspects of the 2007 and 2010 laws were widely ignored – and to a “startling degree”. According to the comptroller’s review, “The laws have been ignored, sidestepped, and undermined in almost all of the municipalities reviewed.” According to the Office of State Comptroller, 57 of the 60 municipalities it studied “failed to fully comply with the laws." “Legislators from throughout New Jersey thought they had reformed the state’s sick leave policies, but the reforms have largely failed with these 60 municipalities and likely many more,” acting State Comptroller Kevin Walsh said, according to a July 7 New Jersey Monitor article. How many more is an open question. The 60 municipalities studied are but a small sample. The New Jersey 2007 and 2010 laws apply to “565 municipalities, 600 school districts, and 21 counties, as well as hundreds of other local entities like water, sewer, and parking authorities,” according to the comptroller’s office. #StateandLocalGovernment #PerformanceAudit #PerformanceManagement #PublicSectorHumanResources #SickLeave #PublicSectorEmployeeBenefits #PublicSectorHumanResources #PublicSectorWorkforce #CompensatedAbsence #UnfundedLiability #PolicyImplementation #FlawedPolicyImplementation #StateandLocalUnfundedLiabilities #EmployeeLeaveLiability #PublicSectorLeaveLiability #UKG #NewJerseyComptrller #MunicipalLiabilities #GovernmentUnfundedLiabilities #NewJerseyPolicyImplementation #SickLeaveOversight #NewJerseyMunicipalities #PublicSectorSickLeave #GovernmentAccountability #StateGovernmentPerformanceAudit #NewJerseyMonitor #StateofNewJersey

There’s been a great deal written about the ways in which states and localities are spending the federal dollars they are receiving from the American Rescue Plan Act. In fact, we just wrote one of our own in Route Fifty about communities that are using these dollars for “transformative” purposes. A helpful resource is now available for people who want to get a detailed picture of how large cities and counties (those with populations of at least 250,000) are using their ARPA funds. You can find it by clicking here: This tracker was formed as part of a partnership between Brookings Metro, the National Association of Counties, and the National League of Cities. According to the site on which you’ll find this treasure trove of information, it is “aimed at highlighting innovative, evidence-based, well-targeted uses of ARPA funds.” According to Joshua Pine, City Innovation and Data Program manager for the National League of Cities, “The current data on our Tracker is for plans submitted August 31st, 2021. The data we are currently cleaning and hope to have running early next week is for plans submitted December 31st 2021.” So, for those of you who are moved by this B&G Report item to immediately visit the site, we recommend that you might want to go back again next week for the latest info. The tracker allowed researchers to see the percentage of the ARPA funds that went to a variety of general categories, and the breakdown is illuminating. · Government Operations - 37.6% · Infrastructure – 12.5% · Housing – 12.5% · Community Aid 12.3% · Public Health – 12.3% · Economic and Workforce Development – 11.1% · Public Safety – 2.3% Atlanta, for example has chosen to spend $10 million of its ARPA funds on a program that allows individual grants, up to $40,000 to small businesses, non-profits, and cultural attractions. Meanwhile, Broward County, Florida is using a little over $26 million to fund affordable housing. Jacksonville, Florida is using over $19 million to “mitigate financial hardship and provide (a) substantial infusion of fiscal resources to immediately stabilize for any economic harms experienced and provide working capital to lay the foundation for a strong and equitable recovery.” And Milwaukee has plans to use $6.1 million on a variety of pedestrian safety improvements along 25 miles of the city’s pedestrian High Injury Network which are “among the most dangerous streets in the city.” Some years ago, we wrote that “Information is King.” Kudos to this combination of entities for understanding that and providing an easily accessible way for individuals and researchers to see what’s happening to these federal dollars in a timely way. #ARPA #FederalGrants #AmericanRescuePlanAct #UseofARPAFunds #ARPAInvestmentTracker #NationalLeagueofCities #PandemicAid #CityInnovationandDataProgram #IntergovernmentalRelations #Equity #AffordableHousing #PublicSectorData #PublicSectorFinance #StateAndLocalGovernmentBudgeting #CityUseofARPAFunds #AtlantaUseofARPAFunds #JacksonvilleUseofARPAfunds #MilwaukeeUseofARPAFunds #RouteFifty #CityofJacksonville #CityofMilwaukee #CityofAtlanta

In researching the 26-year-old Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program recently, we had the chance to talk with Mary Beth Vogel-Ferguson, a University of Utah research professor who has spent the last 23 years in a state-funded project to interview TANF clients and share results with agency management and senior leadership. “My role, which I really appreciate, has been in kind of translating what folks who are experiencing the program say and helping the people that run the program better understand what the impact is on the frontline,” Vogel-Ferguson told us. The long-running interview effort stands out. As we wrote in our June 13 Route Fifty column, there have been too few efforts at evaluating and assessing the results that the TANF program has produced. A PhD in Social Work, Vogel-Ferguson also has directed research studies and program evaluations with state and regional level government agencies and is the principal investigator of studies on other topics, including refugee support, employment of formerly chronically homeless individuals and the implementation of trauma informed approaches. The following Q&A has been edited from a conversation in late May. B&G: You’ve been involved with the University of Utah Social Research Institute project to interview TANF individuals for more than two decades. Could you sum up what the purpose was for state government? Mary Beth Vogel-Ferguson: The Utah Department of Workforce Services (DWS) wanted to get a better profile of who is seeking benefits and also find out what part of the program is working or not. I started 23 years ago and the process itself started a couple of years before that. I give the department all the credit. They recognized that they didn’t really know who they were serving. They needed a better sense of their customer base. B&G: Could you explain to us how the Utah survey approach has changed since this research started? Mary Beth: At the beginning, we were only talking with people who reached Utah’s 36-month time limit. Those are the ones who had the most struggles. It was not representative of the whole population. You have hundreds and hundreds of people who come in, get a little help, get what they need, move on and never come back. In 2006, we started interviewing people as they began their experience, then we went back 12 months later and then 12 months after that to be able to see what changed over time. We went through this process twice – once starting in 2006 and then again in 2012. We started another set in 2018, with the last person interviewed on January 28, 2020, just before Covid. I am not sure of plans for the future. B&G: We know that when TANF began there was still a lot of concern about “long-termers”, individuals who become dependent on cash assistance that they collect without having to work. That was a big part of the political drive to reform Aid to Families with Dependent Children with the current federal program, which has a federal five-year lifetime limit, with shorter time limits in some states, like Utah. Were the concerns about welfare dependency justified? Mary Beth: Everybody was worried about the long-termers. But the reality is that very few people hit time limits. We found the concerns were not anywhere near reality. The perception was that people stay on benefits as long as they possibly can. But of the individuals we interviewed in 2006, only 20% were still on TANF twelve months later, with only 12% receiving cash assistance twelve months after that. The vast majority of people had come and gone. The data has remained very much the same. B&G: Have your surveys told you why people leave the program? Mary Beth: People don’t necessarily like being on benefits. They use them for the time they need them and then they get back on their feet. In some cases, you lose people because the services you provide don’t match with the services they need. B&G: How big is the variation in what people need? Actually, we found that the population is very diverse and thus have very different needs. About 25% of the people come in with so many issues and so many barriers, the idea of complete self-sufficiency, probably even in their lifetime, isn’t realistic. And then you have another 25% who have dealt with whatever crisis led them to seek benefits and they’re ready to launch into employment. They just need help with their resume and interviewing skills. Often when they encounter a TANF system that has them jumping through all these hoops, they feel like they’re going backwards. B&G: Nationally, the percentage of families who receive TANF cash benefits is low. According to the Center On Budget and Policy Priorities, for every 100 families living in poverty, only 21 received cash assistance from TANF in 2019/2020. In Utah, the number of families receiving assistance is even lower: Just 9 families for every 100 families living in poverty. Why aren’t more parents accessing cash benefits? Mary Beth: Well, I think Utah is low for a couple of reasons. One of them is that there's an incredible social services system run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. So, there's a lot of social supports that come through that program and that makes a difference. While the bulk of the supports go to LDS church members, sometimes others can also access this assistance. But there’s also a mismatch between what many people need and what the programs have to offer. And so that's a challenge. There are a lot of people who don’t access any services You really do need a certain level of functioning --or some good supports -- to get on benefits. It can be confusing and overwhelming. Because of this, and many other reasons, a large segment of people living in deep poverty never access benefits. B&G: Have policy or management changes in Utah come from what you’ve learned from your interviews? Mary Beth: Yes. People told us that one of the most precarious times is when they are moving from cash assistance into work. Utah instituted a program called “Transitional Cash Assistance.” It enabled workers to continue on full benefits for two and a half months after they got a job so that they could bridge the time between relying on cash assistance and income. There are so many companies that don’t provide pay until two or three weeks after you start. Another program was Work Success, which was targeted at the 25% who came in ready to work. Instead of tying them into volunteer programs or other ways to fill required work time, they engaged them in a program that was focused on resume writing, interview skills, building self-esteem and other things that might bridge them back into the workforce again.” B&G: Your most recent research report on the latest interview findings shows an improved relationship between Utah caseworkers, employment counselors and customers. Did your interviews with TANF customers contribute to that improvement? Mary Beth: Yes. They helped us focus on what we’ve learned about adverse childhood experiences and early childhood trauma and the link between that and being on cash assistance. The difference between the general population in Utah and the folks on TANF was just mind-blowing and it really created an ‘Aha moment.’ There’s a strong correlation between early childhood trauma and ending up on cash assistance. B&G: Could you explain more about what you see as a correlation? Mary Beth: It’s what we now know about how childhood trauma (and of course adult experiences) can affect the brain and the body. It’s not just about getting people motivated or trying to improve their work ethic. They might have executive functioning skill challenges. They might really have physical health problems or immune system deficiencies that come out in adulthood. These outcomes can occur when you have childhood trauma and your body has been repeatedly flooded with cortisol. We knew it was important for caseworkers to have a better understanding of how this all works. B&G: How did you communicate what you learned? Mary Beth: We did workshops with the caseworkers in the agency. It was wonderful because we were able to use the stories and the experiences of the clients. We were able to help them see that it’s not about blaming the person but understanding where they’re at and seeing what could be done to support their customer in moving forward. We used stories we heard to point out where workers had made a difference in a positive way, as well as when what they did made it more difficult. #TANF #Welfare #TemporaryAssistanceForNeedyFamilies #HumanServices #SocialServices #PerformanceManagement #Evaluation #StateandLocalGovernment #PublicSEctorWorkforce #PerformanceMeasurement #StateGovernmentPerformanceMeasurement #PublicSectorHumanServices #Equity #GovernmentOversight #PublicSectorHumanResources #MaryBethVogelFerguson #UniversityofUtahResearch #HumanServicesResearch #EvaluatingTANF #TANFProgramEvaluation #HumanServicesManagement #HumanServicesEvaluation #UtahTANFInterviewFindings #ChildhoodTrauma #StateGovernmentPerformanceMeasurement #TANFTimeLimits #UtahHumanServices #UtahDepartmentofWorkforceServices

It would be a wonderful thing, we think, if the federal government could move forward on environmental issues. But as recently as a few hours ago, the Washington Post reported that Congress is still squabbling over details of a clean energy proposal, with Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia holding out on one of the key elements of the bill that much of the remainder of his party supports. We’re not going to get involved in this particular debate. But reading the Washington Post story about a Congress that has troubles making progress turned our minds to a column of ours that just came out in the Government Finance Officers Association’s Government Finance Review (GFR). In it, we made the point that there are some simple straightforward things that procurement offices can do to make for a cleaner environment. True, these efforts aren’t going to turn the world on its head, in the way a massive federal action could. But any progress is better than none and at least a number of states and municipalities are making progress on this front. So, we wanted to share some of the details of the GFR piece with those of you who may not read that publication. It focused on something called “environmentally preferable purchasing.” “The idea,” we wrote, “is simple: If an entity is purchasing a good or a service, and can spend the same (or potentially even less) money in a way that’s beneficial to the environment, why not do it? There’s a seemingly endless list of purchases which can be made with an eye toward sustainability and environmental soundness, just beginning with lawn mowers, leaf blowers, fleets of vehicles including buses, paper, cleaning fluids, and on and on.” As Stephen Gordon, a veteran of 45 years in the public procurement arena, who is coordinator of the all-volunteer advocacy group, The Continuity of Supply Initiative, told us, “Procurement can establish itself as a strategic contributor.” As is often the case in this kind of thing, King County, Washington is a national leader in environmentally preferable purchasing. One simple example was the county’s decision to carefully consider the cleaning fluids it uses (and goodness knows, in the days of the pandemic, it’s boom time for cleaning fluids). Some of them, it ascertained, contained potentially toxic chemicals, the kind of stuff we really want to keep out of our air and water. As we wrote, the King County solution has been to “Buy concentrated cleaning fluids that hadn’t been diluted by water, as is the case with the kind of product that would be found in any large hardware store. By and large, such cleansers are about 80 percent water and 20 percent active ingredients. But by purchasing 55-gallon drums of pure chemicals, and then adding water ‘You’re saving money by buying more bulk solutions and then diluting them to an appropriate strength, which minimizes their negative impact on the environment’ according to Karen Hamilton, the county’s sustainable purchasing program manager”. Of course, it’s not necessarily the easiest thing in the world for procurement offices to adopt this kind of approach, in which procurement offices consider environmental concerns in the same way as they would other elements of so-called best-value procurement (the superior, and increasingly used, alternative to the old-fashioned low-bid only policies). Hamilton candidly told us that “Some people in the agencies are concerned about change. They’ve been buying the same thing from the same company for a long time. And you have to persuade them that the products are going to add value.” Still, as we pointed out in our column, “done properly, with safeguards in place to make sure that the benefits outweigh the costs, green purchasing can ultimately be a cost-effective way to keep our air and water clean.” #PerformanceManagement #StateandLocalGovernment #CityandCountyManagement #PublicSectorData #StrategicProcurement #PublicSectorProcurement #EnvironmentallyPreferablePurchasing #SustainablePurchasing #GovernmentCultureChange #CountyGovernmentProcurement #KingCounty #EnvironmentalImpactofProcurement #ContinuityofSupplyInitiative #GovernmentFinanceOfficersAssociation #GFOA #GovernmentFinanceReview #PublicSectorGreenPurchasing #KarenHamilton #StephenGordon #KingCountySustainablePurchasing #CountyGovernmentPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalClimateChangeAction

by John R. Bartle, University of Nebraska at Omaha and Can Chen, Georgia State University John Bartle Can Chen Modern life cannot exist without good infrastructure. Travel, water, toilets, electricity, internet, and heating and cooling for buildings all rely on good infrastructure systems. The wealth of cities depends on public investments in infrastructure. Right now, it might seem as though there is all the money in the world going for these investments. After all, President Biden’s 2021 Infrastructure Bill allowed for the largest investment in public transit in history, the single biggest flow of cash to bridges since the construction of the interstate highway system and huge amounts of dollars flowing toward broadband. But investments in infrastructure are an ongoing proposition, and these federal dollars are one-time money, and often require local matches as well. There needs to be a long-term connection between revenues and expenditures and citizens need to be involved in the decision-making of infrastructure investment. Financing approaches that link the benefits from the projects with revenues can provide long-term, stable, sustainable sources of funding that can be a permanent solution to the challenges we have faced in this area. ​ In our new book, Innovative Infrastructure Financing, we point to several new financial tools and explain where they can best be used to achieve these goals. One such tool is civic crowdfunding. This involves raising money for a project by relying on contributions of small amounts of cash from many people, generally through outreach over the Internet. While this approach has gained public attention for its utility in personal and social needs, it has also been used with success to fund various small-scale infrastructure projects. Crowdfunding is a decentralized, voluntary way to gauge the demand for a project that can involve both residents and non-residents. Rather than going through the often cumbersome and slow process of public approval, if a project can gain support, the funds can be raised quickly, facilitating fast project completion. ​ One example of a successful crowdfunding project is the Arapahoe protected bike lane project in Denver. In 2014, the project raised $36,085 from 250 donors, most of whom were within five miles of the project. The Downtown Denver Project (DDP) secured $120,000 from the Gates Family Foundation and the Downtown Denver Business Improvement District (BID), reported Kate Gasparro, a researcher and currently director of land development at Bedrock Detroit. The city pledged to cover $35,000 of the design fees and construction costs if the DDP would raise $35,000. The DDP engaged interested residents in the design process and re-worked the design to respond to concerns about parking, access routes, and access to fire hydrants, Gasparro found. The project was completed in less than a year. While this project was successful, there were concerns expressed from both residents and members of the BID that public funds should be used instead of soliciting the community. A similar cycling infrastructure project was successful the previous year in Memphis. There, $75,000 were crowdsourced from individual Memphians to connect a low-income neighborhood to an existing bike network. ​ Of course, the amounts that can be raised by crowdsourcing will likely be relatively small compared to the overall project expenses. The Memphis bike lane, for example was a $2 million venture overall. ​ Still, we believe that the advantages of crowdsourcing could make it a relatively common means to get infrastructure projects started, or finished, once the federal dollars stop flowing. That’s because the strengths of civic crowdfunding include: The ability to raise funds quickly, Provision of project enhancements desired by users, Reduced risk to investors, as funds will be returned if the target amount is not raised, and Involvement of funders in a decentralized, voluntary way. The weaknesses include: The fact that they are unlikely to raise amounts necessary to fully fund large projects, It requires effort to initiate a funding campaign, and There’s a risk of damage to reputation if the online platform closes or if funds are not returned. Projects such as the ones in Denver and Memphis show how civic crowdfunding can provide additional funds from donors who are supportive of a project. At the same time, research has shown that government involvement can enhance public trust in a project. This illustrates how the public and private sectors can leverage each other’s strengths to complete an infrastructure project more quickly than might otherwise be the case. ​ The contents of this guest column reflect those of the authors, and not necessarily those of Barrett and Greene, Inc. #StateandLocalGovernment #StateAndLocalInfrastructure #StateAndLocalGovernmentBudgeting #FederalGrants #PublicSectorFinance #PublicSectorBudgeting #CivicCrowdfunding #IntergovernmentalRelations #JohnBartle #CanChen #TransitInvestment #InnovativeInfrastructureFinancing #CityandCountyManagement #CitizenInput #CitizenCrowdfunding #FundingSmallScaleInfrastructureProjects #AraphahoeProtectedBikeLaneProject #DenverCivicCrowdfunding #DowntownDenverProject #MemphisCyclingInfrastructureProject #Crowdsourcing #CityandCountyofDenver #CityofMemphis

Over the last months, we've written a series of columns for Route Fifty and elsewhere about the difficulties states and localities are having in staffing up. We've tended to focus on the reasons why they are short on qualified workers, and ways they can attract more. But it's important to go beyond the turnover data and look at the real-world ramifications of the current hiring and turnover crisis that real human beings can feel in their day to day lives. An audit report that caught our eye this morning makes just that point. It was released by the Illinois Office of the Auditor General in May. The audit focused on Child Safety and Well-Being, and how well the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) was meeting the requirements of a 2019 public act, dubbed Ta’NaJa’s Law, which was designed to improve protections for children in the department’s care. The act was named for a two-year-old who died of dehydration, malnutrition and physical abuse six months after being returned to her mother’s care. The audit makes it clear that the department has not yet been able to fulfill the requirements of the public act. It seems to us that one important reason may be because it simply doesn't have the staff to do so. A summary of the audit’s findings points out that 55% of the 6,037 positions listed within DCFS Operations are “categorized as unfunded.” Of 2,746 positions that are funded, 21% are vacant. The audit contains a mildly-worded recommendation that staffing needs should be reassessed. But we think that may be a bit of an understatement. For example, while the act requires Home Safety Checklists for homes in which a child is returned after being in foster care, the auditor’s sample showed the department could not provide 98% of the documents that the act required. While “aftercare services” were required for six months after a child was returned to a home, the auditor found that 58% of its sample did not have at least six months of these services. Other issues included shortcomings in well-child pediatric visits, problems in immunization data and shortcomings in the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System that made it difficult for auditors to otherwise test compliance with the 2019 act. In the past, we’ve often noted staff capacity issues cited as the reason behind audit findings – most recently in a blog post, headlined "Understanding Understaffing" in March. In the coming months, we’ll be looking to see how much the lack of staff is having an impact on service delivery. In the meantime, we can just hope, for Illinois' children's sake, that the audit there will help to focus the state on redoubling its efforts to get enough people to fulfill the promises the legislature has made. #PerformanceAudit #StateofIllinois #StateandLocalGovernment #PublicSectorWorkforce #PublicSectorHumanServices #GovernmentOversight #ChildWelfare #PolicyImplementation #StateandLocalGovernmentBudgeting #PublicSectorStaffShortage #PublicSectorStaffCapacity #PublicSectorStaffVacancies #ChildSafetyandStateStaffShortages #Understaffing #HumanResources #humanresourcemanagement #TanajasLaw #StateGovernmentStaffShortage #IllinoisStaffCapacity #HumanServiceUnderstaffing #HumanServiceStaffShortage #StateGovernmentPerformanceAudit #IllinoisAuditorGeneral #StateGovernmentUnderstaffing #HumanServices #StateGovernmentTurnover #StateandLocalGovernmentTurnover #FlawedPolicyImplementation

by Neil Bergsman, Senior Policy Analyst at Maryland Nonprofits with a 35-year background in Maryland government finance, both executive and legislative branches. ​ In the federal government, and in many states and localities the budget process is contentious with lots of drama. It’s exciting: red lines, brinkmanship and shut-downs. But excitement isn’t a good thing for budgeting. In Maryland, there has been plenty of contention about budget priorities, what’s in and what’s out. But, despite sometimes intense debates during the process, the state goes beyond the statutory requirement that it pass a balanced budget – it does so a couple of months before the beginning of the new fiscal year, even in particularly difficult years like 2017, when 11 states failed to pass their budgets on time. . For the past 105 years, Maryland's budget has been unique in that the legislature could not add to the budget proposed by the Governor. It could only cut or restrict the use of funds. Many observers of state budgeting believe that this limitation on the legislative budget power is what makes Maryland's budget process less contentious. Next year that changes. The voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2020 that allows he legislature to add to the proposed budget, as long as they do not increase the total. They will have to find offsetting cuts. While this is still less budget power than many other states’ legislatures possess, it will be a big shift for our state. Will this change make Maryland’s budget more dramatic, and more dysfunctional? I don’t think so. I generally think that organizational culture is more important than formal structures. And I think Maryland has developed an organizational culture around a constructive and responsible budget process. I’ve been involved in state budgeting in Maryland for more than 35 years. I’ve been the director and deputy director of the executive branch budget offices - both operating budget and capital budget. I’ve been an agency CFO, and I’ve been a nonprofit advocate. Here are some things I’ve observed that I think will help Maryland avoid damaging budget drama. Successful budgeting is mostly communications Back when we actually “dialed” phones, I used to say that the most important numbers I know in the budget are phone numbers. Frank communication among the people in the budget process can lead to better decisions and a smoother process. We always taught budget analysts to reach out to agency staff if there was a part of a budget request they did not understand. If the analyst sees that there is logic and justification behind the request, either a compromise can be made or mutually acceptable changes can be agreed upon. At the policy level, the budget moves from request to proposal to adoptions more smoothly and with better decisions when people are talking to each other. I’m including the staff people communicating about the nuts and bolts, and about the agency heads, budget chief, and legislative budget committee members talking about the thinking behind the budget decisions. I have noticed a decline in the degree to which there are day-to-day communication among decision-makers over the years. However, in the end they have seemed to come together and agree on a budget deal before the scheduled end of the 90-day legislative session. Getting the numbers right is good. Getting agreement on the numbers is better. In Maryland we are blessed to have long-established processes for agreeing to a lot of the basic numbers in the budget. We have consensus revenue estimating overseen by a board that includes the independently elected comptroller, the treasurer (elected by the legislature) and the budget chief (appointed by the governor). Once the Board of Revenue Estimates issues its report, everyone uses that number. It may not be right (though the track record is pretty good), but it removes one element of contention which complicates budget processes in many other states. There are similar processes for a lot of the technical assumptions that go into building the budget, like pension rates and debt service estimates. When the governor, senate, house, democrats and republicans can all be working with the same numbers for these things, it allows the decision makers to focus on their more substantive disagreements. A boring budget process is good for people I’m proud of Maryland’s budget process. . When there are revenue losses or unexpected expenditure increases, the executive branch and legislative branch leaders have come together to negotiate a solution, normally one that combines expenditure cuts, transfers, reserves, and sometimes revenue increases. Dramatic and contentious budget processes are harmful. They cause uncertainty and disruption for local governments, school systems, public employees, and people who depend on government payments. They erode confidence in government. They result in bad budget decisions that can waste taxpayers’ money and cause excessive liabilities in future years. So, I urge everyone to make your budget more boring by agreeing on key estimates and assumptions, appreciating the pressures on the other people in the process, and communicating very actively. I ​ The contents of this guest column reflect those of the author, and not necessarily those of Barrett and Greene, Inc. #ConsensusEstimating #StateandLocalGovernmentBudgeting #PerformanceManagement #StateCulture #PublicSectorFinance #StateandLocalGovernment #StateLegislation #Maryland #NeilBergsman #LateStateBudgets #LegislativeExcecutiveBalanceofPower #GubernatorialPowers #StateConstitutionalAmendments #StateBudgetAnomalies #StateAdministrativeVariation #MarylandOrganizationalCulture #MarylandStateBudget #PublicSectorBestPractices #MarylandBudgetProcess #MarylandNonprofits #StateofMaryland #StateGovernmentBudgetVariation #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #StateGovernmentBudgeting