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We often talk about performance auditors on this website. These dedicated professionals may be appointed or elected. They use well-accepted auditing standards to assess risks, uncover management problems and gauge how well programs perform, providing valuable insight and oversight throughout the country. Then there’s California. In addition to the traditional kind of performance auditing, which takes place in many of the state’s cities, and counties, it also has an unusual approach to local oversight that makes use of about 1,100 citizens each year to provide assessments of how programs operate. It’s called the California Civil Grand Jury system. In each of the state’s 58 counties, jurors serve a one-year term, map out plans for the topics they want to tackle and then plunge in. About 900 reports are produced each year. Recent topics have included the monitoring of idle oil wells in Santa Barbara County; efforts to increase affordable housing in Santa Clara County, and the homeless animal problem in Contra Costa County. Details about the reports – as well as official reaction to them -- are available through “California Grand Jury News, “ a blog that’s published by the California Grand Jurors’ Association. If you want to find more, there’s a new 50-page e-book, which the association wrote about in a blog post yesterday (March 20th). This is a powerful example of citizens participating in their governments that’s unlike that found most anyplace else. If you live in California, by the way, the association is very eager to increase the pool of qualified jurors. From the e-book: “Qualifications for serving as a grand juror are simple: The applicant must be a citizen of the United States: 18 years or older; a resident of the county for one year immediately prior to being selected; in possession of their natural faculties; of ordinary intelligence, sound judgement and fair character and possessed of sufficient knowledge of the English language.” (Note that we also wrote about California’s Civil Grand Jury in a blog post about five years ago, which you can see here. ) #PerformanceAudit #CitizenParticpation #CaliforniaOversight #CaliforniaCounties #GovernmentOversight #GovernmentAccountability #CaliforniaGrandJurorsAssociation #CaliforniaGrandJuryNews #CaliforniaCivilGrandJury #CitizenInput

Performance auditors frequently do a very good job at holding agencies in their states, cities and counties accountable, by doing careful analysis and frequently making recommendations. But how many of those recommendations are actually implemented, and how many wind up as nothing more than well-intentioned suggestions (rather like the New Year's resolutions people make to lose 30 pounds in the next year)? Many entities do reviews of recommendations and the city of Portland, Oregon has just done a notable job of comparing how agencies responded to recommendations made by City Auditor Mary Hull Caballero through 2021. We want to congratulate the auditor's office for doing this review -- and making it totally transparent by sending it out to people like us! According to a release that accompanies the report, "Recommendations from a 2018 audit of Parks and Recreation’s scholarships have yet to be implemented, and the Police Bureau is still working on half of the 10 recommendations we made to improve overtime management in 2019." There was good news as well. For example the report's summary points to "Human Resources and Technology Services [which] topped the list of percentage of recommendations implemented with 86 and 67 percent." “Carrying out audit recommendations is essential for improving how Portland works,” Hull Caballero said in the release. “Portlanders are best served when managers implement our recommendations to make their programs and operations more efficient, effective, and equitable." Here are the actual results, as shown in the auditor's follow up of audit status report, which can be found at: https://www.portland.gov/audit-services/annual-follow-status-reports#toc-summary #AuditRecommendations #AuditRecommendationImplementation #PortlandAudit #PortlandAuditRecommendations #GovernmentAccountability #GovernmentOversight #CityAudit #PerformanceAudit #CityPerformanceAudit #PerformanceAuditDashboard

As we say on the home page of this website, we are "dedicated to state and local government." Notwithstanding that, we feel awkward about going about our day-to-day work as though the world was in a "business-as-usual" mode. It's not. We at Barrett and Greene, Inc (which is to say Katherine and Rich) want to speak from our hearts, and say -- like millions of others have said: "Our hopes and wishes go to the valiant people of Ukraine. May they soon know peace and freedom." Credit: Adam Young (Canadian/contemporary) Hearts for Ukraine, 2022 Acrylic on wood 24 x 24 inches Private collection

It often feels as though the Holy Grail of government management is to have some process or procedure written into statute. That’s the only way, the presumption goes, to be sure that a new management idea is actually implemented and, presumably, supported with cash. In fact, over the decades of observing the ebb and flow of management efforts in state and local governments, we’ve seen that often the ethos or culture of an organization is just as important as the statutes it puts on the books. One example that immediately comes to mind is Vermont. That state is often singled out as the only one of the fifty that doesn’t have a legal requirement for a balanced budget. But that doesn’t matter. As the Volcker Alliance indicated in a report we wrote, “Statutes or constitutional requirements in forty-nine states mandate that budgets must be balanced, while Vermont does so by long-standing tradition.” By contrast, take a look at some of the statutes that have required various kinds of performance management efforts. In a 2018 book by Elaine Yi Lu, and Katherine Willoughby they found that forty two states had some kind of performance budgeting in statute. Based on our own experience, we’re aware that far more than eight states have had no real apparatus in place for using performance budgeting in a real way, and the statutes in some are little more than words on paper, signifying little in the real world. Willoughby and Yi Lu put the matter into more deliberate terms, writing that “the lack of a performance budgeting law “does not preclude use of performance budgeting, and the existence of a budget law does “not “necessarily lead to strong practices.” Back some years ago, when we were working on the Government Performance Project, an effort funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts to measure the management capacity of the fifty states, we pointed to the power of a pro-management ethos in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The person in the governor’s seat in that state cannot run for re-election immediately after a four-year term (though the governor can run for non-consecutive terms). Yet, despite every four year changes in this powerful position, Virginia’s capacity to manage wisely continued through most administrations, despite an occasional hitch. Many of the ways in which Virginia did particularly well in those years were not written into any form of statute, though. For example, in the last iteration of the GPP reports, which came out in 2008, Virginia was given an A in the category that focused on human resources. Part of the reason for this was that it was a pioneer in integrating human resource knowledge transfer. No statute forced the state to do that. But it did, to the state’s benefit. All this, however, doesn’t mean that a state’s ethos can’t change over time. Back when we were working on a project similar to the GPP for the now-defunct publication, Financial World, New Mexico was the very last of the fifty states to agree with the idea that performance management could be a benefit. (You won’t find this online, as Financial World isn’t just defunct, it’s pretty much invisible, but we well recall New Mexico leaders telling us that they weren’t interested in pursuing that path in the early 1990s). Today, however, that has changed dramatically, and the state is now a national leader in this critically important management tool. In fact, the Center for Accountability and Performance at the American Society for Public Administration has just given the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee, its prestigious “Organizational Leadership Award.” And that’s one way in which ethos and statute have a great deal in common. They can both change. The fundamental difference is that statutes can change at the whim of a legislature, while ethos tends to be more difficult to change – for better or worse. #GovernmentManagement #GovernmentPerformance #Performance #StateandLocalGovernment #GovernmentPerformanceProject #PewCharitableTrusts #KatherineWilloughby #ElaineLiYu #VolckerAlliance #NewMexico #Virginia

In the many performance audits we read each year, a common recurring problem is staff capacity. While this isn’t a new issue, we're confident that it will get increasing attention in coming months – an outgrowth of the nearly universal problem that state and local government entities currently have with escalating turnover and declining job applications (two topics we’ve recently written about for Route Fifty). Understaffing is one frequently cited reason for tardy reports or missed deadlines. Not surprisingly, in the last couple of years, it has also been a significant factor in audits about overtime. In addition, inexperienced or absent staff can be cited as the reason for financial errors. Since understaffing is so often the cause of a host of problems, we jumped at the chance to read a recent audit that focused specifically on this issue -- not just its ramifications. This document, which we think is useful for state and local agency leaders around the country -- and their HR offices -- was produced by the Atlanta Auditor in a February 2022 performance audit about “Facilities Management Staffing and Scheduling” in Atlanta’s Department of Aviation. While a lack of attention to staffing can have all kinds of negative effects, the problems in this audit are particularly significant since, as the auditors wrote, "Adequate staffing and scheduling in the Facilities Management division is vital to airport operations and safety.” The Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, owned by the City of Atlanta, is one of the world’s busiest. One worrisome piece of data: 17% of technical staff did not have required licenses or certifications. Many of the findings – and recommendations -- in the audit related to data systems that were improving, but were still diffuse, sometimes paper-based, often inconsistently used, and plagued with missing data. Close to 17% of data fields were blank and only 65% of work orders included start dates and finish dates. While noting the difficulties of comparing airports, due to different methods of measurement and the issues that come with self-reported statistics, the audit noted that Atlanta had a passenger to staff ratio “four times higher than the median”, based on six large airports that auditors contacted for comparison. The city data problems hampered management’s ability to make decisions about staff or schedules. “Facilities Management’s workload information is incomplete and inaccurate,” auditors wrote. The result? “Division management cannot analyze and determine resource needs.” Another problem was the absence of a salary and compensation study to provide documented evidence that salaries were uncompetitive with the market, a problem that hobbles the division’s efforts to fill positions. Uncompetitive city pay “has affected the department’s ability to hire technical staff, such as electricians,” auditors wrote. In fact, 30% of the electrician positions in February 2021 were vacant. #PerformanceAudit #Performance #Hiring #HumanResources #Staffing #Understaffing #Data #CityGovernmentVacancies #FacilityStaffing #PublicSectorStaffCapacity #CityStaffCapacity #PublicSectorHumanResources #CityHumanResources #AtlantaAuditor #AtlantaHumanResources

As anyone who is following our website knows, we write for a great many other publications and organizations, including Route Fifty, the Government Finance Research Center, the Government Finance Review, the IBM Center for the Business of Government and more. We’ve been privileged to have a fair amount of latitude in the topics we cover for these outlets, but we’d never get away with writing a piece that has the title this blog item does. Truth is that every few days, in the course of our work, one of us complains to the other one about something annoying that has come up in dealing with states and localities or organizations that work with states and localities. Our daughter, Sandy, sometimes jokingly uses the word “rant,” for a verbal tirade she’s about to launch about something. So, what follows is our rant about some of the issues that aren’t hugely important but are really bothersome. We’re pretty sure we’re not alone in the world of researchers, analysts and reporters in our frustration with the following common nuisances. With that in mind, we hope readers will understand that we’d like it if some of what follows provides some insights that will help people get their messages across without frustrating the messengers. 1) With some frequency, we come across a wonderful looking report, which we think can help us understand a topic more thoroughly – and potentially be of use in a column or article we’re writing. But then we go in search of the date of publication, and it’s no place to be found. It’s important to us that the facts and figures we use are timely. We just don’t understand why people don’t put dates on things. 2) We send out so many e-mails that it could make your head spin. Frequently, they’re requests to people for information or for a telephone conversation. We understand that the people we’re contacting are generally very busy. We really do get that. But we can’t understand why so many folks don’t take thirty seconds to write back and say, “I got your e-mail, but I won’t be able to get back to you until Thursday (or Friday, or never).” That would help save us from bothering people by re-sending the same e-mail two or three times. 3) While we’re talking about e-mails, we wish that people understood the frustration of email miscommunication. Many people write e-mails quickly, without a sense of subtlety. We’ve witnessed more than one misunderstanding (not necessarily involving us) that emanates from a terse e-mail that inadvertently leaves improper impressions. Our rule: If it’s taking too long to write an e-mail, because we need to make a subtle point, we pick up the phone. 4) Back to documents. When reports are sent to us in PDF format, we can’t manipulate the data, with any ease. PDFs may look prettier, but they’re somewhat less useful than other data-friendly forms. 5) In the old days, when we had most of our communications through good old-fashioned telephones, it wasn’t a big deal if someone was delayed and kept us waiting for ten or fifteen minutes. If anything, we could get lots done in those little nuggets of time. But now that so many conversations are being held on Zoom or some other visual platform, and the other party is late, we find ourselves sitting in front of a screen, staring at our own faces. 6) It would be great if people who are asking us for help (which we’re generally happy to give) spelled our names properly. This may seem petty. But we can’t help but assume that if someone can’t bother to know that Katherine is spelled that way, not “Catherine,” or “Kathryn,” perhaps they’re not sincerely interested in getting our help. We’re also not altogether fond of having a note sent to us as “Dear Greene,” or “Dear Barrett”. We assume those names are used for us when the note is computer generated, which doesn’t make us excited about responding. 7) Like many others, we’ve grown increasingly dependent on websites in order to find the appropriate person to speak with about something. Frequently, we can find the name of a likely source. But how to reach them? Missing contact information is a constant frustration. No useful phone numbers are anyplace to be found. Sometimes there’s a general number, but those lead to menu upon menu upon menu, ultimately leading no place worthwhile. We’d settle for an e-mail address. But they, too, are often missing in action.

by Alan Mallach, senior fellow at the Center for Community Progress and author of The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s paper “The Empty House Next Door.” There are millions of abandoned properties in America, and they’re a symptom of an economy and a housing market which is comfortable with the idea of leaving large parts of America behind. They are mostly found in the hearts of older cities, like Cleveland or Detroit, or in rural areas, like Appalachia or the Plains states. ​ As I wrote in my book, “The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America,” at the same time as some areas in cities like St. Louis or Chicago are gentrifying, in far more areas struggling working-class and middle-class neighborhoods, are falling behind. As a result, in the last two decades, more and more abandoned properties have begun to pop up in not only in older cities, but often in many of the inner-ring 1950s suburbs that surround them. ​ There are sections of American cities where the majority of parcels are either vacant buildings or vacant lots, a condition I’ve termed hypervacancy. ​ Though properties that owners have literally walked away from are common in those areas, most are invisible to people who live in other parts of the country. They are a powerful symbol of the economic, racial, and spatial polarization of 21st century America. ​ Abandoned properties are not just harmless eyesores. While they are not the cause of the problems facing distressed urban neighborhoods or rural towns, they make those areas’ problems worse. They reduce the value of neighboring properties, increase the risk of crime and fires, and perhaps most of all, foster a sense of hopelessness, a feeling that a neighborhood is beyond repair, and the only thing to do – if you can afford to – is to get out. ​ In areas where there are still far more occupied houses than abandoned ones, and where there’s demand, it makes sense to try to get the properties fixed up and restored to productive use. ​ The city of Baltimore came up with a great program they called Vacants to Value. Leaders there picked areas in the city – mostly struggling working-class neighborhoods – where small contractors and developers were willing to use their own money to fix up abandoned properties, and where the city made sure that they got properties to rehabilitate. That program has stabilized many neighborhoods in Baltimore that might otherwise have gone under. ​ The problems of abandoned properties in many places are made more difficult to deal with by legal systems like tax foreclosure, state laws that tie municipalities’ hands in dealing with abandoned properties, or local government neglect. These challenges can result in properties sitting empty and in legal limbo until they are beyond repair. By the time the city or a nonprofit can get control of these properties, they have usually been vandalized, stripped of copper pipes and lack working plumbing, heating or electricity. They are expensive to restore, and there’s little money available to deal with more than a handful of them. In some cases, there’s little to do except demolish them. ​ Demolition got a boost about ten years ago, when the Obama administration allowed states to redirect money from what was called the Hardest Hit Fund – a program set up to help states deal with unsalvageable, foreclosed properties by tearing them down. Cities like Detroit and Cleveland made progress by demolishing thousands of abandoned properties. But the money ran out as the Obama administration ended. ​ Demolition is an expensive proposition, and even when affordable, there’s still a next step. What to do with the vacant lots that remain? ​ There are solutions, which can range from reforestation to the creation of urban farms, to mini- parks or solar fields. In Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society has done great work along those lines. ​ Cities like Cleveland, which once had nearly a million people, but today has less than 400,000, can’t use more than a handful of their vacant lots for redevelopment. Many of the rest can be greened, with benefit for the residents and their environment. Sadly, some cities have trouble with greening as a strategy because even though they’ve been losing population since the 1950s, they’re still unwilling to accept the reality that they’re never going to have the population they had back then. ​ There are amazing people and organizations in American cities trying to deal with these problems. Groups like the Cuyahoga County Land Bank in Cleveland, and Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation in Youngstown are doing great work. But they don’t have enough resources to tackle more than a small part of the problem. ​ That goes to a larger issue. If we are going to deal with abandoned properties at the scale that is needed, we need more local initiatives, we need better state laws, but above all, we need more resources, especially public money to cover the costs that the private sector won’t or can’t cover. ​ There have been many efforts in Washington as far back as the 1970s, along with efforts in many state capitals, to direct attention and resources to this issue, but none of them have ever gotten much traction. Here and there a one-shot infusion of funds has helped, but there’s been no long-term, serious effort. ​ Meanwhile, cities and rural areas continue to struggle with the problem without the resources to fix it. Sadly, it may be that most people are basically untroubled by the prospect of leaving large parts of America, and the people who live there, behind. ​ Note: Barrett and Greene recently wrote a column about abandoned properties for Route Fifty. ​ ​ ​

We’ve been watching city, state and county efforts at performance reporting for many years, and we know it’s hard to do. We applaud the governments that have moved forward aggressively in publicizing the results of programs -- whether they are good or bad. But even though we're fans of performance reporting, and the courage it takes to do it, that doesn't mean it's unproblematic. We bring this up because we just read an investigative report that was issued by Douglas Hoffer, the Vermont State Auditor, about the Vermont Annual Outcome Report. At the bottom of this blog post, you'll see a short video in which Hoffer addresses his complaints with his state's outcomes report. There are quite a few of them. Like us, the auditor is a fan of performance reporting. The first sentence in this 25-page critique notes that performance measurement when done well, “is a powerful tool that leads to evidence-based decision making, better program management, and greater accountability.” We don’t agree with all of his criticisms, but in our opinion, most of them have merit. In fact, a number of the problems he points out reflect the “don’ts" side of the recent ”Dos and Don’ts” paper we co-authored with the Urban Institute’s Harry Hatry and Batia Katz, and several other very knowledgeable contributors who have spent years studying this topic, including Maria Aristigueta of the University of Delaware, Don Moynihan Of Georgetown University and Kathy Newcomer of The George Washington University. (See our favorite, do’s and don’ts in our February 16 blog post.) Here are a few of the problems Auditor Hoffer points to: Vague goals. The auditor worries that the goals that drive Vermont’s performance outcome reporting are too broad and undefined. For example, one goal is that “Vermont has a prosperous economy.” But it’s not clear what that means or how it will be measured. Mysterious targets. In contrast to the broad goal for the economy, Vermont’s outcome report has targets that leave the reader with questions about how they were established. For example, the outcome report tracks the fall-related death rate and notes that the target is 116.9 per 100,000 adults. “It is not clear how this target was set up or what achieving the target means,” the investigative report notes. There is also no explanation for a 10% reduction in the target that was established in 2009. Lack of definitions, explanation or context. The report says that 93% of Vermont is covered by “state-of-the-art” telecommunications infrastructure. Yet, Hoffer points out that Vermont’s cellular and broadband coverage needs significant expansion and improvement and that it is “difficult to know what is measured by the indicator.” As an aside, the lack of solid and consistent definitions is a prime culprit in the problem of poor state data quality. There are other problems, and we encourage you to watch the video, which is not the most elegant, but makes many very good points. #PerformanceReporting #Audit #Auditor #AuditReport #Performance #Vermont #PerformanceMeasures #Outcome

We frequently track the work of government membership associations, one of the best ways to see what state and local decision-makers and appointees in a wide variety of fields are talking about. These are the places that top officials share challenges, solutions and news of their fields with one another. The output of these organizations tend to be a bit siloed, however. With everyone short on time, we’re not sure that budget directors pay leisurely visits to websites designed for human resource officers or that CIOs eavesdrop on what’s happening in the world of Treasurers, Comptrollers or Auditors. So here we go. We’re introducing a new feature in the B&G Report today in which we scour a selection of membership organizations periodically to give our readers a taste of the information that they’ve recently published. The organizations on these lists will vary over time, depending on what’s new. NASBO -- National Association of State Budget Officers This week, NASBO continued to publish summaries of the Governor’s State of the State addresses. As of March 4, forty speech summaries are available. Links to the speeches themselves are here. The last two governors to give State of the State speeches this year are from Louisiana and Ohio, and these will take place on March 14 and 24, respectively. Also of note: On February 22, NASBO’s Kathryn White posted “Data Analysis: State Rainy Day Fund Balances Over Time” in the organization’s budget blog. NASCIO -- National Association of State Chief Information Officers On March 1, NASCIO posted its top ten enterprise risks for 2022. Top risk (no surprise): Cybersecurity. See the rest here. According to NASCIO, these enterprise risks, compiled with input from state CIOs, should be a valuable reference to states and the marketplace. NASCA – National Association of State Chief Administrators If you’re interested in what the different individual State CAOs do, NASCA has published its 2022 “Areas of Responsibility” report. As with just about everything in the world of states, the role varies from one place to another, with some CAOs having jurisdiction over budgeting, technology, accounting and a wide variety of other fields, while others have a more limited oversight role. NACo – National Association of Counties NACo held its 2022 legislative conference in February, with news and commentary from the conference covered extensively by County News here. On March 3, NACo updated its FAQs on the American Rescue Plan Act. On March 1, NACo executive director Matthew Chase responded to President Biden’s State of the Union address noting that the address highlighted the need for strong intergovernmental partnerships. The press release statement ends with a call by Chase for bipartisanship and a link to NACo’s 2022 priorities. On February 24, NACo published the first in a series of layman’s guides focused on improving communication between county officials and county technology leaders. See also our Route Fifty Q&A about the layman guide project with NACo CIO Rita Reynolds. APHSA – American Public Human Services Association On Wednesday, March 2, APHSA released a new report, “Core Principles for TANF Modernization: A Legislative Framework for TANF Reform.”

We like to think that we’re pretty sophisticated in most things pertaining to states and localities. But when we drive through our little town of Bethel, Connecticut, we can’t tell you who actually owns and maintains any individual road. Is it the state or the town? We can tell you for sure that it’s not the county, because Connecticut eliminated any responsibilities for counties years ago (right now, they’re pretty much just geographic lines on the map). That makes things a lot easier in Connecticut than elsewhere, but it’s surprising to us how many people have little idea of the vast multitude of services that are delivered at the county level in most states. Over the years, we’ve come to the conclusion that many, if not most, Americans don’t have much of a notion which level of government is responsible for what, and that citizen confusion just begins with road maintenance. That's one reason that intergovernmental relations are so complicated. People, for example, use the words jails and prisons interchangeably. But, of course, jails tend to be run by local jurisdictions like cities and counties, while prisons are the province of the states. Then there are many of the social services that are run by non-profits. Some are funded by municipalities. Others are funded by counties. Others are funded by states or get no government money at all, from anybody. And in many cases the money that’s used for them by cities, counties and states originates with grants from the federal government. Here’s another: Pretty much everybody knows that the Army is run by the federal government. But pause for a second and think about the National Guard. Is that a state or a federal operation? Turns out, that it’s both. “The National Guard remains under the command and control of their respective governors but is funded by the Department of Defense (DoD) according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. We had to look that up. Why is this important? We call it the “Acid Rain Trickle Down Effect.” It’s our theory that as the federal government has appeared to become increasingly dysfunctional – with many elected figures appearing to be more concerned with maintaining power than helping the people they represent live healthier, happier more productive lives – people are growing increasingly inclined to think that all levels of government are equally flawed. We don’t think so. Many cities, counties and states are accomplishing important things right now. Certainly, there’s escalating partisanship at all levels of government, but while that can slow things down, nearly every week we’re learning about some state or locality that has made progress in an important arena.

By David Brunori, research professor of public policy at The George Washington University and Senior Director at RSM US LLP There have been a lot of calls to eliminate or reduce sales taxes on groceries. In the past couple of months, governors and legislators in at least seven states have made such proposals. Indeed, the governors of Virginia, Maryland, Kansas, and Illinois have made cutting food taxes a priority in their budgets. This is not new or surprising; 32 states already exempt “food for home consumption” from the sales tax. Traditionally, the move to exempt groceries has been justified as a way to reduce regressivity. This year, though, proponents have used the pain of inflation on the general public as the primary rationale for cutting taxes. Cutting taxes on groceries is, of course, politically attractive. If asked, people would generally rather keep more of their money in their pockets, rather than leaving them behind in retail establishments. What’s more, making a bold move like cutting grocery taxes can give political leaders a popular issue to exploit come election time. This helps explain why both Red and Blue state leaders have joined the chorus calling for tax cuts on groceries. Whatever the political advantages, I believe that reducing or eliminating the tax on groceries is terrible tax policy. I’m fully aware of the argument that taxing groceries is considered to be unfair to people with less money who tend to spend more of their paychecks on food. But let me make my case. First, exempting groceries violates the tried-and-true principle that the sales tax should fall on all final consumption. The idea is simple: If you exempt certain products and services, everything else must be taxed more. A tax system built on a broad base and low rates minimizes economic distortions and administrative and compliance burdens. Exempting groceries intentionally distorts economic decisions – which in turn violates the principle that the tax system should be as neutral as possible when it comes to the economy. In the states that don’t tax groceries, the government favors food consumption over other types of consumption. Worse, the exemption creates all kinds of compliance problems. What exactly is the definition of “food for home consumption,” the wording generally used for those items to be taxed? In some states, 12 donuts are exempt but 11 are not. A loaf of bread and a half pound of ham is exempt, but a ham sandwich is not. Virtually all states tax candy and soda – but those products also need to be defined, and they are often not defined well. Bear in mind that the grocery exemptions are based on the belief that groceries are a necessity. Admittedly, I am uncomfortable with the government deciding what is necessary. But are all non-soda and candy items at the grocery story necessities? Ice cream? Brussels Sprouts? Caviar? Lobster? I knew a woman who worked as a model. She existed on cigarettes, gin, and Twizzlers. I suspect her definition of necessity is different than yours. But the real problem with exempting groceries is that it has a negligible effect on tax incidence. That is, the system is no fairer by exempting these products. When food for home consumption is exempt all people save money. My poor neighbor may pinch pennies at the discount grocer and be happy to save the tax on a can of generic green beans. But I shop at Whole Foods. My filet mignon and fresh swordfish is also exempt from tax. At best, the exemption is a clumsy and expensive way to provide tax relief to the poor. Moreover, the discussion on groceries does not even reflect the way in which many people actually get their meals. Poor and middle-class families, particularly with children, eat out a lot. During COVID they have been ordering in a lot. They pay tax on their fast-food meals or their home delivered pizza. I understand the politics. I understand that grocery stores would prefer their products to be exempt. And I understand the desire to help the poor. The sales tax as applied is decidedly regressive. But it is regressive largely because of what we don’t tax (intangibles, real estate, professional services). If everything was included in the base, the sales tax would be much more proportional. In sum, to get back to the major objection to grocery taxes, which I mentioned earlier, there is a better way to provide relief to those with less money. Utah Governor Spencer Cox, whose state partially exempts groceries, is proposing a food tax credit that would be applied to residents’ income tax liability. He proposes, for example, that a single parent earning under $20,000 a year, raising two children would get a grocery tax credit of $240. This would provide a refundable grocery tax credit to low-and-middle-income households, and it would provide more relief to the poor than a blanket grocery tax exemption. This credit would be refundable – so Utah residents could get it even if they didn’t have taxable income. The income tax is particularly well suited for providing relief to lower income residents. Such a credit is a far better idea from a policy perspective than a grocery tax exemption ​ ​ The contents of this guest column reflect those of the author, and not necessarily those of Barrett and Greene, Inc.

We’ve seen lots of changes in public sector human resources over the years, but none as startling and transformative as those that occurred during the pandemic. So, we were glad to see the new report from Deloitte that cited the management of people, at all levels of government, as the biggest underreported story of these weird and deadly two years. The report, titled “The Rising Influence of Human Resources in Government During the Pandemic”, includes a strong focus on the remarkable adaptations that governments made to deal with telework, and the ability of human resource directors to deal with “on-the-fly” flexibility. “Rarely in modern history have we seen so many large-scale experiments in government rolled out so quickly and at such a massive scale,” wrote report authors Glenn Davidson, Emily Dydo, Sami Tewolde and Nathan Watson. As the pandemic abates (we hope), we’re seeing still more massive scale HR transformation. That’s partly due to the pressure that’s come from the hiring, retention and staff capacity crisis that has accelerated in 2022. But it also comes from rapidly growing attention to the benefits of smoothly working technology and the data it generates. To combat fierce competition with the private sector for employees, more governments are making conditional job offers at the same day as interviews. We’re seeing increasing use of data to surface pay and hiring inequities; pinpoint the overuse of overtime; track employee skills and competencies, plan for future workforce needs and reduce health plan costs. We worry a bit about the affect that the many rapid changes, and continued staff shortages, have on the HR profession. But we like the optimistic observation that ends the Deloitte report: It makes a good case that, as a result of the pandemic, a growing number of government officials have heightened and enlightened appreciation for the importance of the people who are in the human resources field. As Kimberly Loving, the Chief Human Resources Officer in Seattle, is quoted as saying: “At its core, the pandemic’s impact on the HR function is this: it has shined a light on the value that the HR apparatus brings to an organization.”