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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.

We’ve moderated or been panelists in a seemingly endless number of webinars over time. The last few months, as live conferences have swirled away into the maelstrom of the pandemic, their number has multiplied. With that in mind, we wanted to let you know about a webinar that we think should appeal to anyone who finds their way to the Barrett and Greene, Inc. website. titled “The Post-Pandemic Economic Transition: An All-Star Webinar”. It will be held on October 14 at 1 p.m. eastern time and has been a collaboration between the Government Finance Research Center at the University of Illinois Chicago and the American Society of Public Administration. A little about this event: The coronavirus pandemic is likely to dissipate at some point in the foreseeable, if uncertain, future. But experts agree that the economy will continue to suffer for years thereafter. With that in mind, the panel will focus on the transitional period between the eradication of the disease and the full rehabilitation of the economy. What challenges will states and localities deal with in that interim period? What solutions can be conjured to those challenges that are anticipated now? Panelists will include Michael Pagano (Moderator) Dean, College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs, University of Illinois Chicago and Director, UIC's Government Finance Research Center; Amy Liu, Vice president and Director, Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution; Don Kettl, Sid Richardson Professor, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas and Senior Fellow, the Volcker Alliance; Mark Zandi, Chief Economist, Moody’s Analytics and Richard Greene (co-moderator), senior advisor of the Government Finance Research Center and principal, Barrett and Greene, Inc. To register: https://www.aspanet.org/webinars#PostPandemic For Queries: GreeneBarrett@gmail.com

For years, we've written about efforts by states and localities to provide greater transparency. Dashboards are popping up like numerical dandelions; webinars have become prolific during the pandemic; and data points are growing at a rate that renders some almost unusable. But with all the information out there, why -- we wonder -- is it growing increasingly difficult for academics, analysts and journalists to solicit the kind of background information that only comes from human contact? Just for starters, have you tried online to find an e-mail address for a public sector official. Try for a handful and -- depending on the place -- we pretty much guarantee that you'll wind up frustrated in at least a couple of cases. This may be attributable to a fear of hacking, but it feels like a tragedy of the modern era to us that government employees are increasingly out of reach. Next step is to make a phone call, right? But phone numbers are even harder to find than e-mail addresses. (And we've been at this for decades -- pity the poor layman who is trying to talk to government in writing or telephonically.) Some governments use fill-in-the-blanks forms to reach a source. It feels kind of efficient to send in a request that way. But the sensation is the opposite while awaiting a response. Are you having the same experiences as we are? Let us know

Multiple changes are affecting local government auditors as they adjust FY2021 audit plans, change work habits and contemplate potential large budget reductions. Several surveys of local shops over the last five months detail some of the major changes. The most recent survey was released by the Minneapolis internal audit office at the end of August and included responses from 23 peer audit shops around the U.S. Among the findings: · Given telework experience during the height of the pandemic, more than half of audit offices plan to “formally implement remote work” going forward. Only 14 percent said they would not do that. More than 80 percent envisioned a future work environment that would be a hybrid of work at home and in the office. · The majority of respondents had not previously considered a pandemic or other long-recurring event in disaster recovery or business continuity plans. Only about a quarter had done so. About half are now revising plans to include the potential of a pandemic going forward. · About half of respondents said their audit plans had changed because of the pandemic and another 26 percent said they were intending to make changes; 57 percent said they had currently performed or were planning an organization-wide risk assessment. The following areas were identified as the major “high risks” in the current environment: IT and cybersecurity; police and public safety, human resources; finance and payroll and health. A similar survey was conducted between April and June by the Austin City Auditor. It found that some audit work was being delayed because of staff or auditee availability and that audit shops were turning to projects involving a shorter duration and narrower scope. There was a general focus by auditors on finance and internal controls. Several surveys of both private sector and public sector audit shops also have been conducted in recent months by the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA). The IIA surveys reveal accelerating worries expressed by public administration audit organizations about budget issues. In a survey conducted in April 2020, 21 percent of public administration audit shops expected a decrease in their budgets. But in a survey two months later, half said they expected to experience budget reductions over the next 12 months.

We started writing about performance measurement and evaluation three decades ago, roughly around the time that Paul Decker, the president and CEO of Mathematica, began his illustrious career in program evaluation, data analysis and public sector policy and management. For the last 13 years, he has led one of the world’s largest public research organizations with the mission of its 1400 employees focused on improving public well-being. Our interview with Decker was one of several we conducted with Mathematica researchers for our new book, The Promises and Pitfalls of Performance-Informed Management (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020). At the time of the interview we were working on our chapter about evaluation. Here is an edited version of the conversation. Q. What were your first experiences like in the field of performance measurement and evaluation? A. My initial exposure was the JTPA system, the Job Training Partnership Act. That was highly representative of the old world. The data weren’t readily available and the adjustments that were intended to turn outcomes into impact were simplistic, crude and not well understood by people in the field. Cream skimming was a fact of life that you had to deal with there. If you wanted a high employment rate, you could select people who had a high probability of being reemployed. In that kind of program, self-selection is a factor, too. People who have more employment barriers are less likely to show up for training. It’s the nature of the beast. The JTPA existed in a world where we were trying to make people’s lives better by intervening. The challenge was finding what happens in the absence of the intervention. It was an unsatisfying system. It was expensive and it didn’t generate clarity. Methodologists had no confidence that it was really giving an accurate impression of performance. Mathematica President Paul Decker Q. What do you see as the biggest changes that have occurred over time since those JTPA days? A. What’s changed over time is the greater availability of data. Programs back then didn’t have extensive administrative records. They now do and the data are likely to be better. Measurement and evaluation are a lot cheaper than they used to be. You’re dealing with databases that get updated frequently so it’s a dynamic picture -- a flow of data, rather than a very static snapshot. The data is richer and timelier. That feeds into more of a continuous improvement approach. It better fits the need of program administrators. We’re not where we want to be, but things are moving a lot faster than they did. The numbers part of the picture has really been transformed and needs to be more heavily integrated into the management processes. Q. What are the big differences in how performance measurement and evaluation are used in different levels of government? A. In recent years data have been leveraged in a more intensive way at the local and state levels versus the federal government. That’s because cities have the data on people’s everyday experience. How quickly is snow being cleared from streets in the winter? How effectively is crime reduced and are we becoming safer over time? By paying attention to the data, you can quickly have an impact on people’s lives and that’s of interest to mayors because they want to improve the lives of their constituents and also be reelected. I’m talking primarily about the most data-forward cities. The average city probably hasn’t made as much progress. . But the most innovative cities – New York, Chicago, and Kansas City -- have been thinking about this, not only from the perspective of what data do we bring to bear but how do we make administrative changes in light of the data we see. It’s harder at the federal level. I think the idea of integrating data into public management hasn’t been advanced as quickly as at the city level. They’re working that out, but it’s often the research office in a federal agency that does this, while the people in the program offices will need to rely more on data in the future. States are kind of in between. They still don’t have the resources to fund the evaluations.) But I imagine that will change, too, as the cost of research comes down. Q. Almost five years ago we wrote a column in Governing about the tension between evaluation and measurement. It was called, “Government’s Data-Driven Frenemies.” Individuals in both fields were trying to figure out how to improve programs, but they didn’t quite trust each other. Is that what you observed? A. In the old world, we tended to have this attitude that on the one hand there was performance measurement and on the other there was evaluation. But they weren’t completely separate. People understood that if you want to transform performance measurement, you have to think about the concepts that we think about in evaluation – about causality or what would have happened with the absence of the program. I think frenemies is a fair characterization. On the performance measurement side, if you didn’t understand some of these concepts you could mislead people into thinking the program was doing something it wasn’t doing. You’d have positive outcomes, but you might have had those outcomes even without the program. There was skepticism about the ability to really conduct effective performance measurement without a recognition of evaluation principles. The critique in the 1980s and 1990s was that there was no way to get at impact except by using random assignment. Q. Do you think the tensions between evaluators and performance measurement folks have dwindled? A. I think more and more these two concepts become intertwined. They’re blending into each other and the idea of frenemies becomes passé. All of this gets better with new technology and new data. But it’s a work in progress. Research offices work really hard on identifying causality and the impact of programs and do it in a way that’s relatively detached. Program administrators don’t have that luxury. They have to make the program work more effectively every day. This is the nascent phase of the transformation – putting this more in the hands of public managers. And bringing the effort to analyze impact into a very central part of their day to day management. This will become a critical part of management, but it’s not embedded in systems yet. This is in transition. Q. Do you see more impact evaluation being done by practitioners as opposed to research organizations or departments? A. There are more and more parts that will be embedded as management responsibilities. In the past, if there were questions around ways to reduce participant attrition in a program, a manager might have relied on a participant attrition expert. Now, I think the first step for a program manager would be to see whether the data can be used to formulate a strategy to reduce attrition rather than simply relying on someone’s expert judgment. This is definitely changing relationships. The history of Mathematica’s business is doing work on contract to research offices. We had relatively little contact with program managers 30 years ago. If there was an evaluation, public managers would be engaged in the discussion, but we weren’t working closely with them or providing guidance on how to use data. Because of this transformation, we now can provide guidance directly to program managers. It’s transforming who our clients are. We’re not just focused on evaluation for policy makers or Congress on how to set policy based on the big evaluations we do. Program administrators become potential clients too as we answer a broad array of administrator questions with data and insights. Given the changes that have happened, evaluation should be faster and cheaper. Rapid cycle testing is nested within that. You want to try things, evaluate and adjust. You don’t want to always have spent five years to generate evidence. You do it more quickly and spend a fraction of what you would have spent in the past. Q. Do you have an example of the rapid cycle testing that you’re talking about? In urban school districts, there’s a widespread issue of teachers having high absentee rates as the school year is winnowing down. With rapid cycle evaluation, you can test out different interventions in different schools and even use random assignment to do that. Not many program managers think in those terms yet. That’s not changing any time soon, but I think that’s where we’re going. Q. We’ve heard so much about evidence-based policy in the last few years. How much effect is this movement having? A. I think the emphasis on evidence has had an effect to some extent. But it has to be embedded into the public management process so that program managers are using data as effectively as they can to manage their programs. It’s one thing to get people talking about evidence-driven program implementation or management, but it will take time to make it a reality. You must have the right skills and culture. Having the right data is also an issue. That’s why I say we’re in the first half of the first inning of this game. A lot of things must happen for the game to progress. If you don’t have a culture of embedding this in day-to-day program administration, you aren’t thinking hard enough about the data that would drive change most effectively. A lot of the data that’s needed is some of the hardest data to get.

As we pointed out in our July 9, 2020 Route Fifty column about police oversight, many communities that clamor for civilian oversight of police have been disappointed by the results. Setting up a civilian oversight board is only a first step. How well it operates depends on multiple factors. The policies that guide the board’s operation are critical – for example, the responsibility of the police department to respond to recommendations and the organization’s power to access information. But basic operational elements also can have a significant impact -- the experience and competence of the executive director and staff; continued community involvement; training of board members; insulation from politics; independent legal counsel, and ongoing and adequate funding. When we interviewed Liana Perez, operations director for the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE), she noted that The City of Miami had an effective model that provided it with the authority that many other civilian oversight bodies lacked. We turned to Cris Beamud, executive director of the Miami Civilian Investigative Review Panel, for the elements she defined as important in heading up an organization with impact. Beamud has broad law enforcement experience with a stint early in her career as a Rochester, New York police officer and later, after law school, work as a prosecutor and a police legal advisor. Before coming to Miami in 2013, she also had experience setting up a civilian oversight auditor’s office in Eugene, Oregon and a civilian review board in Atlanta. Here is an edited version of our conversation. Q. Is there any one model of oversight that is most successful? A. There are many different approaches – auditor and monitor models and investigative models, but it has to be tailored to what the community needs. If the community considers robust internal investigation lacking, then you need an investigative model because internal affairs isn’t doing a good job. Or, it may be that investigations are fine, but the analysis and adjudication is weak. Then you need different elements. Usually, it’s a hybrid. Q. Can you point to some of the key elements needed when oversight is established? A. This has to be well funded. A weak and underfunded board is oversight light. It’s almost like a political trick. When I first came to Miami, the budget was $350,000. The budget had been cut in 2008 and 2009 during the economic crisis and we were very low and understaffed. By 2018, we had risen to $700,000 and then a new ordinance was passed so that we now receive 1 percent of the personnel line of the police department. That’s a good way to do this. Our budget is now $1.1 million. That enabled me to hire an assistant director and a policy person, in addition to our two investigators, an administrative assistant and myself. We can do much more robust policy work and much more community outreach. We have constant information dissemination to make sure we don’t fall off the radar. Q. Do you have recommendations about staffing an oversight body? A. Sometimes a review board may be too heavily staffed with people who have loyalty to the city as a whole. If you hire someone from the city law department to be director or independent council, their thinking can be shaded by their loyalty and past duty to protect the city. That can make for problems. I also knew it was important for us to have our own independent counsel and not rely on the city’s lawyer. That’s expensive, but it means we have a great law firm that helps us, and we are free of ties to the city’s law department. Q. What about selection of the board? A. With the inception of the Miami Citizen Investigative panel, board members were nominated by the community organizations that had pushed for its formation. They were approved by the city commission, but they weren’t selected by the commission. Now, the panel has its own nominating committee. By taking selection out of the hands of elected officials, it removes some of the politicization of the board. You have to put some distance between the elected officials and the people who serve on the board. One change in the process here was also to require that two members come from each of Miami’s five political districts. In the beginning, too many panel members came from wealthier districts rather than representing the diversity of the community. Q. Are there ways of ensuring that the organization that’s been created fulfills its mission? A. After it has been established and has an adequate budget, strong personnel and an independent council, the community needs to stay involved. It’s important to have a constituency that is supportive and helpful. They can see if the board is becoming less probing or is unfair. Sometimes, executive directors will be reluctant to say somethings is going badly. So, it’s good for community organizations to stay involved and to assist the board on staying on point and on track. It’s important for people to keep an eye on what’s going on so that it continues to run well.