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There’s no question that it’s been a remarkably tough time for state and local governments for over eighteen months now. Confronting the pandemic has been an extraordinary challenge – one of the few in memory that has taxed the capacity of governments in all fifty states and Washington D.C. And times are certainly still difficult right now. Partisan politics is playing hob with our ability to govern effectively and civilly. Forecasts call for upticks in the rate of Covid. Crime rates have been rising. But with Thanksgiving coming up this Thursday, we thought it would be only appropriate to sit back, take deep breaths and consider some of the reasons why mayors, governors, selectmen and all the people who work for them, might be grateful. Here are the five that came to mind: 1) The Infrastructure Act. For years now, we’ve been writing about the fact that decaying infrastructure in this nation is one of the most troublesome long-term liabilities around. When roads, bridges, buildings, and water pipes aren’t properly maintained, it inevitably will cost more in years to come. Eventually, the work needs to be done –or run the risk of bridges collapsing or potholes growing to be the size of minivans. While there are going to be all sorts of obstacles on the way to spending this money effectively and efficiently, these are the kinds of challenges that states, and localities can just wish for. 2) Surprisingly robust revenues have allowed states to set aside healthy rainy day funds. As the Pew Charitable Trusts recently reported, “Unprecedented federal aid and smaller-than-anticipated tax revenue shortfalls have allowed the majority of states to avoid tapping their rainy day funds since the outset of the pandemic-driven recession in early 2020. After a one-year dip, states’ combined fiscal cushion—counting rainy day funds and leftover budget dollars—was expected to spring back and exceed pre-pandemic highs by the start of this budget year.” 3) A growing awareness of the need for equity, diversity and inclusion. This is a tricky one, indeed. Although there have been a series of incidents around the country that make it appear that implicit and explicit racism is epidemic, a number of them have functioned as wake-up calls to states, counties and cities. And although there's a long road ahead, real changes are being made, just beginning with the growing use of so-called equity budgeting. As we wrote in Route Fifty, "A growing number of cities are turning to their budget offices to help treat historically underserved communities more fairly." This trend has accompanied another -- the appointment of chief equity officers in Washington D.C., Denver and many other places. 4) The discovery of the advantages of remote working. While a handful of places, notably Tennessee, have acknowledged the benefits of remote working for some time, it became a necessity for many places during the pandemic. While this took a great deal of adjustment for governments and for workers, and it has certainly had its downsides, remote work appears to be here to stay – at least in a hybrid fashion in which people work from home a few days a week. A few of the benefits include: 1) Savings on the cost of leasing or maintaining government office space 2) Reduced carbon emissions as fewer people are taking their cars to work and 3) A kind of workplace flexibility that is being used as an incentive to draw applicants to hard-to-fill public sector jobs. 5) Thanks to a combination of reforms and a booming stock market, state and local pension plans – one of the great long-term threats to their fiscal stability – are in better shape than they’ve been for at least a decade. Again, we’ll turn to Pew for the data to back up this this comment. As it wrote back in September, “The nation’s state retirement systems finished the 2021 fiscal year in their best condition since the Great Recession of 2007-09 . . .Pew estimates that state retirement systems are now over 80% funded for the first time since 2008.”

By Charles Sallee, Deputy Director, Legislative Finance Committee, New Mexico. New Mexico stands “at the forefront of states engaging in evidence-based policymaking,” according to a Pew Charitable Trusts brief published this year, This is something about which good government advocates in the state can be proud, but it’s not as though someone in the capital suddenly turned on a performance management switch. In fact, New Mexico’s Legislative Finance Committee (LFC), and the legislature in general, have been doing performance-based budgeting since the early 2000s. More recently, we’ve added new ways to use evidence, including through our participation in the Pew-MacArthur Results First Initiative. This overall legislating for results framework has resulted in millions of dollars being steered towards evidence-based interventions designed to achieve better outcomes for New Mexicans. Using credible research to influence policy One important part of that effort has been building credible evidence to guide decision making about priority policy issues facing the state. A good example emanating from the early days of New Mexico’s work in this area comes from the field of early-childhood education. In the late 2000s, the state launched a pre-K initiative, backed by national research, showing the effectiveness of high-quality preschool. Coming out of the great recession, policymakers were debating whether to expand the program, with a focus on early literacy. That raised an important question: Were early education dollars already being spent in New Mexico producing the impact that advocates for the program had hoped? The LFC tasked our staff—led by our director, David Abbey—to conduct a rigorous program evaluation to answer that question. Our LFC program evaluators conducted a quasi-experimental study to examine whether students who had participated in pre-k programs in the state—particularly those from low-income families—were more ready to learn by kindergarten. It also examined whether those students had higher literacy and math scores by third grade. The answer on both counts, published in a study in 2012 (Developing Early Literacy in New Mexico), was a definitive yes. The fact that the study came from a trusted non-partisan source with a reputation for sound analysis and no “dog in the fight” on the issue, helped bolster the impact of the findings. The study helped spur major new investments to expand pre-k programs, from about $14 million in 2012 compared to over $106 million in 2021. Today, about 80 percent of four-year-olds in New Mexico have access to some form of publicly funded preschool. Developing inventories of agency programs A more recent core strategy was codified in the New Mexico Evidence and Research-Based Funding Act of 2019, which was an amendment to our existing performance-based budgeting and accountability approach. It stemmed from legislators’ desire for more information about the programs that agencies were running, especially in high-priority policy areas. The Act empowers the LFC, in conjunction with the governor’s budget office, to require certain agencies to create program inventories in specific policy areas and share that information as part of their budget submissions. That includes information about what the programs cost, whether they’re backed by credible evidence, how many people they serve, and other information. To date, five agencies have developed ten inventories. One of these, for example, focuses on juvenile justice programs in New Mexico, a policy area chosen in part because there exists robust national research about efforts that work well. That has enabled our Children, Youth and Families Department to examine that research (using national evidence clearinghouses) to determine the extent to which their programs are using evidence-based approaches. In that way, the inventory effort is not just about providing better information for legislators. It’s also about getting agencies into the habit of looking at the evidence and requesting funding for evidence-based interventions, since agencies will be more likely to be successful through the funding process if they’re prioritizing those types of requests for the LFC and the governor's budget office. An emerging strategy: LegisStat A third strategy is unique and very new. In August of this year, the LFC did something that I believe no other legislative committee in the U.S. has done to date: It launched a “PerformanceStat” initiative. The idea is to have ongoing, data-driven performance reviews between leadership and departments or divisions. Unlike check-in meetings that most organizational leaders run, where the focus is on the hot topics of the week or month, PerformanceStat meetings keep coming back to the same set of organizational challenges until they’re fixed. The LFC adapted that approach to a legislative context, dubbing it “LegisStat.” Instead of a mayor or governor running the meeting, the leadership team is the LFC, led by committee chair Patricia Lundstrom. An important goal of the initiative is to change the dynamic of the typical committee hearing, which is often dominated by lengthy agency presentations and may not tackle the most important agency performance challenges. LegisStat reverses that, with short agency presentations and most of the time spent on those challenges, with handouts that ground the discussion in data trends. The pilot LegisStat meeting in August 2021 focused on New Mexico’s economic recovery from the effects of the pandemic. Two more LegisStat meetings were held in October, focused on K-12 and higher education. Based on the committee’s direction, we hope to have quarterly LegisStat meetings for all large agencies in the coming year. What it takes Forward progress on building evidence, program inventories, and LegisStat have all required legislators, as well as partners in the governor’s office, who care deeply about results and about maximizing the positive impact of state spending on people’s lives. It has also helped to have a robust LFC staff with a long-standing reputation for unbiased, rigorous analysis to help support that progress. Important too has been external partners, such as the Results First initiative. Today, our state motto, “Crescit Eundo” meaning “it grows as it goes,” is a good summary of the growing emphasis on evidence within our budget process. We hope to continue that progress in the years ahead.

“What party is running the legislature?” “What party is the governor?” Those were two questions that we were frequently asked by reporters back in the early days of the Government Performance Project, when we were evaluating management capacity in the states (and occasionally cities and counties). You may not believe this, given the way the world appears today, but frequently, we couldn’t answer one or both of those queries. One of the major areas of focus then – as it is in our careers now – on management; the critical skills that often lead to the success of failure of policies, no matter how sensible they may appear. We were able to do dozens of interviews in each of the states, come to conclusions about how well they managed human resources, infrastructure, budgeting, and so on, and not have party politics play a role in most of our conversations. These days, when articles are written about the states, they’re not just divided into big states and little states or rural states and urban states. They’re called red states and blue states. It begins to feel like this has always been the case, but “some credit Tim Russert as the first TV news person to refer to red states and blue states on a Today show segment in 2000,” according to a 2016 article in the Los Angeles Times. To be sure, we were pretty clear about the parties of the candidates in the states in which we voted (mostly New York). But it didn’t seem to matter a whole lot to us whether a democratic or a republican legislator was supporting management techniques like workforce planning or multi-year revenue forecasting. In those years, Virginia tended to do pretty well in our evaluations, under three democrats and two republicans. Even when the party affiliation of the governor changed, high ranking officials in positions like finance director didn’t necessarily change. It will be interesting to see whether that will be the case when the new republican governor of the commonwealth, Glenn Youngkin takes office, in January. We’re not making any predictions, but we’ll bet a nickel that appointees from the previous democratic administration are likely going to be asked to clean out their desks. Whether we’re right or wrong about Virginia, the trend we’re describing in the states is inescapable. And that make us more than a little sad. It’s hard enough running a government efficiently and effectively without the need to hew to the line of either of the political parties. We saw this phenomenon at its worst over the course of the pandemic. The ways in which states chose to manage the attack of COVID frequently fell into line with the party in control. Should we manage this deadly outbreak by masking? That’s an important question. But why, oh why, should the answer be so clearly correlated to the party running the show? Shouldn’t decisions like this be developed through data, performance measures, evaluations and all the factors that went into our evaluation of something we called “managing for results,” in the first days of the GPP (and its predecessor, a project we created for the long-defunct publication Financial World). We believe that most things in the world are cyclical. And maybe things will go back to a time that we look back at as the “good old days.” We hope so. But we’re not holding our breaths.

by Chris Fabian, Co-founder and CEO, ResourceX I recently read a quote from Mike Mucha, Director of Research at the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA), in Governing in which he stated, "The budget is, basically, the center of the government universe. It's where decisions about what's important get funded." This message completely rings true for me and why we have focused on the budget itself as if we wish to transform the lives of the people in our communities. ​A community gives its resources to a local government, and in turn entrusts that local government organization to invest those resources equitably towards a more prosperous future for all. ​The budget process that so many of our communities depend upon to deliver on such a promise is based on a line-item approach. The line-item budget turned 100-years old this year, and it’s feeling its age. The line-item budget is something to marvel at for its sustained use by so many, and it truly serves a great purpose for spending control and appropriation management. But, as a resource alignment mechanism to deliver equitable prosperity for all, it’s often ill-equipped for the task. ​ Of course, it’s easy to critique the line-item budget process. I’m not the first and likely won’t be the last. From zero-based budgeting, to budgeting for outcomes, to performance-based budgeting, budget reform is not a new topic. It’s just that we still long for a clear and attainable breakthrough, one that would be easy on our staff to implement, powerful in the way it equips decision makers, and meaningful to our residents whose lives depend on it. The simplest breakthrough we’ve seen has been the transition from a line-item driven budget to a program budget. And budgeting programmatically within the context of priorities, from equity to climate, safety to infrastructure, health to arts and culture creates a clear path from resources to results. ​That brings us to equity budgeting -- an effort to ensure that tax dollars are distributed across demographic groups in a community. One of the leaders in the budgeting for equity movement has been the City and County of Denver, Colorado. Among the earliest initiatives of Mayor Michael Hancock when he first took office was to establish an Office of Social Equity and Innovation and to create a clear definition of equity. However, they struggled to find a connection to their stated objectives within their line-item budget. Through the creation of a program budget and the identification of program-centric change recommendations in the budget process, they were astounded to see that the opportunity to increase equity existed within every service they provided. ​Most recently, ResourceX partnered with Results for America and GFOA to work with a cohort of cities on the What Works Cities’ City Budgeting for Equity and Recovery (CBER) program. Through this program, select cities endeavored to define equity for their community and align resources accordingly through Priority Based Budgeting. Some inspiring stories from the CBER cohort include the City of Austin's work to define what equity means to their community and the City of Pueblo's application of equity to their American Rescue Plan Act fund process and a citywide rollout through program budgeting and Insights. The City of Austin worked with ResourceX to identify a custom set of attributes against which each of their 55 programs within the Arts & Culture Division could be evaluated to determine equity alignment. Their program evaluation process focused on enhancing equity and expanding revenue-generating opportunities. Through a ResourceX facilitated insight workshop, Austin identified 65 opportunities, with 17 directly tied to achieving equity goals. Meanwhile, Pueblo applied the PBB scoring methodology to the assessment of their ARPA proposals by creating a unique scoring matrix to evaluate all proposals against. Per Treasury guidance, and as a strong focus from the city in general, they made equity a primary focus in their evaluation process. ​In addition to its strategy for spending Rescue Plan money, Pueblo built out an entire program inventory, allocated its line items, associated Basic Program Attributes (mandate, reliance, cost recovery, population served, demand and equity), and participated in a facilitated ResourceX insight workshop utilizing a new equity definition for their community, two new equity scoring categories and unique equity scoring metrics. Although the equity goals of various organizations are different, they all share a vision for change; a direction that will lead to more significant systemic changes. Think of local government as a collection of programs offered to meet the entity's stated policies. In that case, programmatic changes can be the vehicle for systemic change, which sums up my vision for how ResourceX can play a part in making our world a better place to live. Local government success can only be defined as the ability to provide services and programs fairly and equitably to all citizens. I believe that local governments can enter a new era in citizen-focused governance by focusing on equity. This includes setting clear equity goals and objectives, understanding individual program impact on equity outcomes, adapting existing programs, starting new programs, and securing funding within the budget for equity-focused programs. As stated in the ResourceX Mission and Vision Statement, "Things are far from perfect. So why try? We believe our work at ResourceX begins with the premise that maybe we have enough resources within our organizations, throughout our communities, or across our regions to provide a good quality of life for everybody; the task of our work is to help our clients systematically go out and try to prove it."

Harold “Hal” Steinberg, one of the most influential people in the world of government financial management and performance died on October 25th at 86. We met Hal many years ago, just as we were beginning to find our way around the world of performance measurement. He was a gracious guide to us, and as the years passed, we were honored when he called on us to review some of the reports he was working on. We were first introduced to Hal by a long-time friend and colleague, Jay Fountain, now director of OPM in Stamford Connecticut, who had been friends with Hal for 48 years. Here’s what Jay told us about his loss: “Hal was always on the forefront of trying to improve the quality of financial reporting for state local and federal government. He was a gracious friend, as well as a dedicated public servant and continued his work while others retired. His insights and leadership will be sorely missed.” A little history (the full history of Hal’s accomplishments would be far, far more lengthy): In 1961, he joined Peat Marwick and Mitchell (now KPMG) and he later became head of both KPMG's state and local government price and then its federal government practice. In 1981, Hal joined President Ronald Reagan’s administration as Associate Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget. While there, his accomplishments were more than impressive: He established the Inspector General Program and implemented the single audit and the CFO Act of 1990. He also served for a decade on the Federal Accounting Standards Board and was instrumental in forming the Certified Government Financial Manager and Certificate of Excellence for Accountability Reporting programs at the Association of Government Accountants. Though we haven’t spoken with Hal for a couple of years or so, our memories of his intellect and acute wisdom are strong and vital. Donations in Hal's memory can be made to Hal Steinberg Memorial Fund c/o Association of Government Accountants 2208 Mt. Vernon Ave. Alexandria, VA 22301-1314

In our weekly exploration of state and local government audits, we often see workplace culture coming up as an important side issue which affects turnover, employee engagement and resident services. It is rare, however, for workplace culture to be the main topic of an audit, as it was in a September performance audit of Washington State’s Department of Fish and Wildlife. The audit was sparked by legislative concern about sexual harassment charges that emerged several years ago, but there were also reports of employee bullying, unprofessional behavior, and a high level of turnover, particularly within human resources. One example from the report: An employee told auditors that he witnessed an employee screaming at another employee. “This person said basically, ’I’ll strangle you,’ screaming and yelling at another employee in the building. The whole thing was handled with ‘Just go tell them you’re sorry and it will be fine.’ Then the person was promoted into a manager position.” When auditors delved into the department’s problems, it didn’t surface the kinds of sexual harassment problems that sparked the audit, but it did hear complaints about gender discrimination, bullying and a frustrating lack of action in response to employee or supervisor bad behavior. “Complaints are made, and nothing comes of it,” one employee told auditors in a group interview. We bring all this up, not to beat up on Fish & Wildlife, as the department has already been working on fixes to its work environment. The human resources unit, which was the focus of much of the trouble, has a new director with surveys showing considerable improvement – 67 percent of HR Department employees said their agency was a great place to work in 2020, for example, compared with 38 percent in 2019. Still, the audit makes it clear that workplace culture can be slow to evolve and urges the department to persist in its efforts to make the important changes that are still needed. Since other departments in other states and local governments can also benefit from the Washington State Auditor’s recommendations, we’re repeating a handful of them here, in abbreviated form: 1. “Develop a professional conduct policy, which clearly identifies the consequences for all types of unprofessional behavior.” 2. “Ensure all supervisors receive required training on how to effectively manage personnel, including how to respond to incidents of unprofessional behavior. 3. “Implement a process, such as 360 evaluations, for employees to provide feedback on their supervisors’ behavior and effectiveness. 4. “Outline the investigation process of reports so investigations are handled in a consistent manner and employees know what to expect.” To see the audit, in full, click here.

Bet you got the answer wrong. It turns out that only one out of four 911 calls has to do with crime in progress. The rest deal with medical emergencies, noise complaints, overdoses, traffic violations, domestic disturbances—"scenarios which may be better handled by nonpolice public health and safety professionals,” Rebecca Neusteter, executive director of the University of Chicago Health Lab, told us in an interview that was featured in Route Fifty. You can find it here. As Neusteter told us, ”We’re bringing people together to have a public conversation about how we transform 911 to develop a safe, supportive, community-driven emergency response system that is prepared to respond to a variety of scenarios in tailored ways and prioritizes health and safety. Transform911 is taking a comprehensive look at the 911 system, nationwide, gathering feedback from experts and community members, and reviewing research to develop evidence-based recommendations for state, local and federal policymakers to drive change." While the 911 reform initiative is still in an early stage of development, Transform 911 has begun to provide links to a wide variety of interesting approaches across the country through an interactive map on its website. "We’ll be continually adding to this site and are encouraging people to share things we may have missed and make corrections or additions to the data we’re curating," Neusteter said.

In recent weeks,we've published several columns of which we're particularly proud, on #RouteFifty. You can find them all on the Hot Off the Presses Feature of this website, but we wanted to draw your attention to a few of them here, as well: * A Transparent Look at How Governments Are Spending the $350B in ARPA Funds On Aug. 31, states and large localities had to provide reports on how they are allocating their federal funds. They also have to post them on transparency websites, which can help them learn from one another and coordinate spending plans. * The Public Sector Retirement Explosion For years, human resources officials worried about an alarming exodus of government retirees. Now it’s here—and it's because of Covid-19. * How Local Governments Can Prevent Building Disasters Some governments are beginning to take steps to prevent the kind of tragedy that took the lives of nearly 100 people in a Surfside, Florida, condominium collapse in June.

Just a few weeks ago, we wrote a piece for Route Fifty, titled "Can Better Data Fix America's Policing Crisis?" Our major point was that as society debates law enforcement reform, far better data is necessary to provide a road map for needed changes. Shortly after the piece appeared, we got a welcome note from Jacob Cramer, analysis administrator for the Tucson Police Department. We had interviewed Cramer and used his work in Tucson as a central example in the Route Fifty column. He pointed us to a new addition to the dashboard he has been supplying to the public. It gives information about some of the nitty-gritty elements of policy activity. For example, viewers can now see how often a police response is initiated by an officer and how often it was in response to a 911 call. Subsequently, he also added several more data elements to the website and plans to add new ones on a regular basis. There are lots of potential uses for 911 data, including a means to understanding whether all calls that get response from police should be treated that way, as opposed to being turned over to a potentially more effective responder. Another use of this data for residents of Tucson, may simply be to counter the impression that U.S. residents get from watching television. For example, only .7 percent of 911 calls received by Tucson from 2018 to the present are level 1 offenses representing an immediate threat to life. One caveat. The Tucson data set is still a work in progress. It will continue to evolve as Cramer’s team helps the city understand what different categories of response mean. For example, the 911 calls are divvied up into different categories, but some are difficult to understand. One, for example is “check welfare”. That could include a variety of different reasons that someone has called for help. Part of what Cramer’s team is doing now is helping to trace what large generic groups like that mean. Some of the data on the dashboard, suggests 911 issues that may need further attention. This wasn’t a surprise to us. A recent report from the Vera Institute of Justice cited a number of problems with 911 data at the same time that it also saw great potential for its use. Tucson’s ongoing work is encouraging. As Cramer told us, “So many places collect data all the time, but they often do because of statutory requirements, taking the next step to learn from it is an often-missed opportunity.”

Sisyphus, as many of you know, was a character out of Greek mythology who was punished by the gods by being forced to push a huge boulder up a hill, only to sadly watch it roll down again until the end of time. Though our work isn’t a punishment but a pleasure, we sometimes feel like Sisyphus. Not only do we write a great many articles as you can see in the Hot Off the Presses page of this website, we’re always on the hunt for news and insights to share with our readers via social media. We scour dozens of state, local, university, organization and foundation websites each week to find new ideas and insights to write about, and wanted to bring your attention to two of our favorite weekly study summaries. One comes from Florida and the other from California. Although researchers for each will sometimes focus on studies relevant to their own state, the selections gathered each week are often of general interest and just as relevant to other states, and often local governments, as well. Our two recommendations for this week: PolicyNotes from the Office of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability (OPPAGA) in Florida. This comes out on Fridays. Typically, there will be summaries of a few studies each in criminal justice, education, government operations and health and human services. As a sample, the October 23, 2020 version included a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) study about school-based data breaches that affect K-12 students; a summary of U.S. Census Bureau data on state and local tax revenue in the second quarter of 2020, and a Rand study comparing insulin prices in the United States and other countries. This weekly guide to interesting studies can be accessed from the OPPAGA website, though there is sometimes a lag in getting the newest version up. If you want to make sure to get the publication when it comes out on Fridays, you can sign up for a free subscription. Studies in the News is published by the California State Library. It comes out on Wednesdays. Topics covered each week vary slightly, but generally include education, “culture and demography,” the economy, health, general government, transportation and several other areas of government finances, management and policy. The most recent version, dated October 28, 2020, includes study summaries about state tax revenues in August 2020 (from the Urban Institute); racial gaps in distance learning (from the Public Policy Institute of California), and a comparison of voting rules and regulations in the fifty states (from the Election Law Journal). This publication is very difficult to find online, but you can get it by subscribing to the Studies in the News mailing list. Note: We will periodically provide reading recommendations in this space, including books, websites, blogs, reports, and other generally useful compilations of materials. We also welcome suggestions from readers (particularly those that aren’t self-promotional).

Our prediction: Over the next months, a cascade of news stories will focus on the government functions that have been neglected as the pandemic has distracted public sector employees from work that was deemed essential for health and public safety in the recent past. One of our worries, based on a plethora of similar findings in audits around the country, focuses on building and other safety inspections. This is not just a pandemic-era problem, but logically the distractions caused by the pandemic may worsen an already troublesome area. In late September, an Oakland audit found only limited progress on mayoral task force reforms that had followed the tragic 2016 Ghost Ship fire in which 36 people were killed during a concert at an illegally converted warehouse. While the audit credited the fire prevention bureau for making progress in identifying at-risk properties, it found inspections were still falling far short. For example, between September 2018 and September 2019, three years after the tragedy, the fire prevention bureau was still inspecting just 26 percent of all facilities required by the state. Ten days ago, a news article in New Orleans noted that one year after the fatal collapse of the Hard Rock Hotel, the city was still having continued inspector shortages and difficulties in hiring. The Hard Rock tragedy, in which the top floors of the hotel “pancaked” during construction, resulted in three deaths, demotion of the building safety and permits director and accusations against two inspectors for the falsification of inspection reports. The article cited a recent internal audit that found 82 percent inspection record compliance, but also addressed “some instances where inspectors’ vehicles were not at a site when an inspection supposedly happened… or inspection photos were filed a month after the inspection was supposedly done.” Another example: A September Dallas audit cited a lack of monitoring of inspections and maintenance service contracts for the city’s elevators. The audit found that the Departments of Aviation, Building Services, and Dallas Water Utilities could not supply evidence that the elevators for which they were responsible were included in inspection and maintenance contracts. The audit warned of an “increased risk that elevators are not safe for public use.” That month, another Dallas audit found improvements needed in the inspections of both public and private fire hydrants. Problems included an inaccurate count of fire hydrants, inadequate monitoring of repairs and a lack of documentation of inspection spot checks. These are just the most recent examples we have in our files about inspection issues. In recent years, we’ve spotted audits that detail inspection weaknesses in such cities as Atlanta, Berkeley, Houston, Nashville, and Richmond.

We have five major takeaways to share from today’s post-pandemic transition webinar, which was moderated by Rich Greene, half of the Barrett and Greene team. The webinar was a joint production of the Government Finance Research Center (GFRC) at University of Illinois Chicago, where we are senior advisors, and the American Society for Public Administration, with which which we have often worked on webinars in the past. Mike Pagano, director of the GFRC, led a moderated conversation with panelists Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody’s Analytics; Amy Liu, Vice President and Director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, and Don Kettl, Sid Richardson Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas and Senior Fellow with the Volcker Alliance and with Brookings. Here are our top takeaways. · Don’t hold your breath waiting for a return to normalcy. The pandemic has spurred transformational change and a full economic recovery will take several years. “I suspect we’re looking at the end of 2023,” said Zandi. “This is going to be a slog,” · Major governance stresses – including the fraught relationship between governments -- will need massive attention to successfully deal with a host of post-pandemic issues. Front and center are growing worries about geographic and racial inequality and the fact that the pandemic and related disruption will create a host of winners and losers with the losers often coming from those who were worst off prior to 2020. “We need to do much better at creating basic governance strategies,” said Kettl. · The transformation of the way people work will continue, hitting downtowns hard, changing transportation patterns, decreasing business travel and shifting residential needs. (Think houses with more office space). Pressures on downtown areas will also build opportunities for regional development outside of big cities. “Consumer preferences are changing; the way people are buying food is changing; the way people shop is changing,” said Liu. · Success will come quicker to cities that have strong philanthropic and business sectors and solid public-private partnerships to facilitate working together to deal with inequality issues and the highly needed task of increasing more inclusive opportunities. · On a pessimistic note, citizen trust in government, which is needed to deal with countless developing problems, is at a low ebb. On an optimistic note, there is a genuine effort to recognize longstanding racial issues, the importance of inclusive entrepreneurship and the need for a focus on working together to address structural inequality.