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While it is possible to put off other problems, no government can afford to ignore cybersecurity. Yet, many local governments are woefully under prepared for a cyber-attack according to a piece we’ve written for the Government Finance Officers Association journal, GFR (p. 90) We recommend that you read the full piece; that which follows in this blog item should convince you of that. A 2018 survey from Public Technology Institute noted that only 35 percent of local government IT departments had a strategic plan for cybersecurity. Last year, another small survey referenced in a report by PTI and the National League of cities revealed that 80 percent of respondents identified lack of funds as a barrier in achieving the highest possible level of cybersecurity. In a day when the nation is riddled with woes and fears – and coronavirus justifiably dominates the headlines -- this is an issue that shouldn't go on a way back burner. As we wrote, “While it may be possible to put off other problems for local government, no government can afford to ignore cybersecurity. . . It’s not like you can say we’re small and nobody will pay attention to us,” said Teri Takai, co-executive director of the Center for Digital Government. . . “There might be several hundred attempts (at cyberbreaches) in any given day,” said Meredith Ward, director of policy and research at NASCIO, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers. “Someone will be knocking on your door all the time.” NASCIO and the National Governors Association are trying to confront the issue. At the beginning of this year, they published a report about ways states can help local government with cybersecurity. It indicated that about two-thirds of the states provide cyber-security services for their local government, but only a little a third of the states market those services, putting the onus on states to do more outreach, Ward told us. Not to put to sharp a point on it, but it feels to us like there’s a certain similarity toward local approaches to cybersecurity and their pandemic preparedness. They all know that they ought to be doing something, but it’s all too easy to put off until disaster strikes.

It’s been quite a puzzler to us. Unemployment rates have been dipping for about a decade, and the economy is expanding, while wages have gone up. Even revenues in almost all the states have been rising. How then is it that so many Americans are feeling under fiscal pressure? Don’t rising tides lift all boats? No, not if the boats are leaking. A fascinating article in The Atlantic describes the issue as “The Great Affordability Crisis.” Here’s the crux of the piece, by Annie Lowrey, which we recommend highly: “This crisis involved not just what families earned but the other half of the ledger, too—how they spent their earnings. In one of the best decades the American economy has ever recorded, families were bled dry by landlords, hospital administrators, university bursars, and child-care centers. For millions, a roaring economy felt precarious or downright terrible. “Viewing the economy through a cost-of-living paradigm it helps explain why one in five adults is unable to pay the current month’s bills in full.” We’re sure that some economists will disagree with this piece. In our experience, it’s rare to find any thesis that is proclaimed without some economists finding flaw. Sometimes, they’re right. But we’re not economists and found the piece persuasive. Take a read and decide for yourself. If you agree or disagree, please write us care of this website.

For thirty years, we've watched governments struggle to put performance management theories into practice. Our observations, supplemented by dozens of 2019 interviews with practitioners, academics and performance experts, will be available this month in our new book, Making Government Work: The Promises and Pitfalls of Performance-Informed Management. It's the first in a multi-part series, published by Rowman & Littlefield. The publisher's web page for the book is https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538125670. The American Society of Public Administration (ASPA) kindly hosted a "Book Talk" for us on January 9, moderated by Scott Pattison, former executive director of the National Governors Association and now a principal at Pattison Strategies, LLC. We had a great time and are grateful to ASPA for giving us the opportunity to talk about both the benefits and challenges of performance management. A link to the webinar will be available soon.

When was the last time you heard anyone say, “Gee, what an excellent bureaucracy we have in our Department of Motor Vehicles. It only took me fifteen minutes to get a new driver’s license.” Probably never. In fact, the word “bureaucracy” is most frequently used as a pejorative. Consider this from President Donald Trump: “Getting things done in this country, if you want to build something, if you want to start a company, it’s going to be virtually impossible with all the bureaucracy and all the approvals.” Along the same lines, author Franz Kafka said, “Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.” The list goes on and on. But from our perspective – after covering state and local government for decades, the bureaucracy is little more than the apparatus that keeps government running; it consists of men and women who tend to work very hard and take the idea of public service seriously Without them, we’d be left with a bunch of policies and programs, without any progress on implementing them. There are, of course stifling bureaucracies as well as hugely efficient ones. But we take umbrage at the idea that the thousands of men and women who labor at getting the real work of government done are in league with the Devil of Small Details. We posed this opinion on LinkedIn and Twitter a few weeks ago and were startled at the overwhelming – if not universal support for our perspective, The LinkedIn post got thousands of views, leading us to believe that we had struck a very responsive chord. A few sample comments: Michael Jacobson, deputy director of performance and strategy at the King County Office of Performance, Strategy and Budget, wrote, “I like using the word bureaucrat as a positive concept, as in a rational long-term thinker and as a counter to the ephemeral and political. Bureaucracy, alas, retains a negative vibe even to me, despite its potential to ensure equity, consistency and thorough application of rules and regulations.” Yves Genest, vice president of products and services at the Canadian Audit and Accountability Foundation, added his thoughts: “Bureacracy. . . is just a word to describe how we organize purposeful activities. It was first invented by the military 10,000 years ago. It wins wars, builds roads and schools, manages the justice system, provides social services . . . It gets things done. Like democracy it's not perfect, but after 10,000 years, it's the best way we've found to make our life better. The former Kansas City auditor and mayor and recent publisher of Governing magazine, Mark Funkhouser, was compact: “I am a bureaucrat,” he wrote, “and proud of it.” One theory for the reason why the bureaucracy has gotten a bad rap was set forth by Christopher Tyler Burks, a Ph.D student at American University and an ASPA Founders’ Fellow, who offers this thoughtful theory: “Public bureaucrats have been maligned for partisan reasons. There is no amount of performance improvement amid decreasing resources that a bureaucrat can achieve to satisfy a partisan who views the bureaucracy as the problem and enemy ("Starve the Beast"). Of all the responses we received, one of the most interesting to us came from Kil Huh, who leads the Pew Charitable Trust’s much-praised work on fiscal and economic policy, He wrote, “Max Weber a German sociologist once argued that [bureaucracy] was the most rational way to organize society. He wrote at a time when government was doing cutting edge stuff. Now things like hierarchy, division of labor, rules, [and treating] people like widgets seems so tired. “That said, I still believe in government and bureaucracy to be careful, thoughtful and fair. But what Weber loves about it seems antiquated. Just my two cents.”

We’ve long thought that the competition between states for economic development, largely in the form of incentives, can be counterproductive. We’ve seen little evidence that tax abatements have been the most important factor – if a factor at all – when companies decide where to move or remain. And yet, the so-called “war between the states,” has continued largely unabated. What’s more, anecdotally, we’ve heard of a number of instances in which a company has already decided on the state to which it will move, but then fishes around with others, creating a kind of bidding war that doesn’t change the outcome, but does mean that the winning state gets less out of the deal than it might have without this kind of competition. Now, however, Missouri and Kansas have taken steps to create a ceasefire. After discussions between the two states, on June 11, 2019, Missouri Governor Mike Parson signed legislation restricting the use of economic development incentives for companies on the border of neighboring Kansas. The Governor was quoted in a press release as saying, “Incentivizing companies to move a few miles doesn’t result in new jobs for the citizens of Kansas or Missouri, and it takes state resources away from other priorities.” As the governor was quoted as saying in Missourinet, “I think Missouri has spent well over $100 million on this border war and Kansas has spent well over $100 million.” The Missouri bill, as you might expect, was contingent on passage of a reciprocal agreement from Kansas. Following an executive order signed by Kansas Governor Laura Kelly in early August (see above photo), the law will go into effect on August 28, 2019. As the executive order read, “no state-level economic development incentive programs under my jurisdiction shall be used to incent businesses with jobs currently located in the Missouri Counties of Jackson, Platte, Clay or Cass to relocate those existing jobs to the Kansas Counties of Johnson, Wyandotte, or Miami. Although this pair of bills were initiated by the well-known issues behind the “border wars” between the two states—and is limited to border counties — it certainly feels like a model for other states in similar circumstances; and a model.

Information may be the most significant asset held by states, localities and the federal government. That’s part of the reason why so much of it has been made legally public to men and women who aren’t in the government themselves. Yet, Ruth Marcus, deputy editorial editor of The Washington Post labeled a bevy of federal non-disclosure agreements “not just oppressive, but constitutionally repugnant.” Not long ago, we wrote an article, for Governing, which takes note that non-disclosure agreements and confidential settlements appear to be in ever-wider use in states and localities. For example, as the column reports, “Secret agreements have also generated controversy in Massachusetts state government. There, The Boston Globe has made a public records request for copies of 33 confidential settlements signed by House Speaker Robert DeLeo since 2010. So far, it has refused the Globe’s request. But in March, the House did pass a measure to release former chamber employees from any non-disclosure agreements they had signed. . . “Legislation to curtail agreements or settlements that require confidentiality have since been introduced in Pennsylvania as well as California, New Jersey, New York and Washington state. Most of the bills specifically relate to sexual harassment or discrimination and would apply to both the public and private sector.” Fortunately for the citizenry, the press, advocacy groups and others interested in seeing information that legally belongs to them and is paid for by public dollars, some states and cities already limit secret agreements. That includes San Francisco, which prohibits the city from entering into confidential settlements. All of this can be a blow to potential whistleblowers. Though the feds strongly protect people’s ability to report wrongdoing, state laws tend to be somewhat weaker and may not even be known to employees, Tom Devine told us. He is legal director of the Government Accountability Project, an organization dedicated to protecting whistleblowers. We recommend the full Governing article to you.

Congratulations to the great city of San Diego. The following press release just crossed our desk: Confirming his commitment to making the City of San Diego as innovative as the people it serves, Mayor Kevin L. Faulconer today announced that San Diego has been named the nation’s top performing data-driven city by Governing magazine. The magazine’s annual “Equipt to Innovate” report ranked San Diego No. 1 nationally for using data to improve performance and create a culture of efficiency. It also recognized San Diego as one of the top five cities nationwide for being resident-involved, employee-engaged and smartly resourced. “This recognition reflects our efforts to ensure government is as innovative as the people we serve,” Mayor Faulconer said. “San Diego is using data to fix our roads, make neighborhoods safer and cleaner, and create more opportunities for residents. These are services San Diegans depend on and we’re using data to get results.” In recent years, the City has focused on increasing its use of data and technology to improve transparency and performance. Key measures include: · Becoming the largest City in the country to create a data portal where residents and employees can download datasets · Hiring the region’s first Chief Data Officer · Developing StreetsSD so users can monitor street conditions and schedule road repair · Making San Diego the largest city in the nation to have a user-friendly online portal for public records requests · Providing dozens of city data sets to the public through the City’s first Open Data Portal · Creating PerformSD to allow the public to track performance through 40 visualizations linked to key performance indicators · Deploying the Get It Done application to allow residents to report neighborhood issues, including potholes, graffiti and illegal dumping San Diego’s biannual resident and employee satisfaction surveys, work with public and private sector partners and communication efforts also helped secure this recognition. “We are utilizing technology to empower residents, streamline government and drive civic engagement,” said City Councilmember Mark Kersey, whose private-sector background is in the technology industry. “In 2013, I drafted our Open Data policy with the help of local tech experts, because the City’s data belongs to the people of San Diego. Mayor Faulconer has taken that commitment to transparency and innovation to the next level and made San Diego one of the highest-performing cities in the nation.” San Diego and other high-performing cities will be recognized at the 2018 Summit on Government Performance & Innovation, an annual gathering of more than 600 innovators, public sector change-agents, disrupters and civic entrepreneurs making government work better for local communities. The 2018 ranking surveyed 74 cities, up 23 percent from 2017. Those cities represent 53 million residents, including all 10 of the largest U.S. cities. “Residents and businesses expect cities to provide nimble and robust responses to today’s challenges and opportunities,” said Mark Funkhouser, publisher of Governing. “The results of the second annual Equipt to Innovate survey show that a critical mass of American cities – along with their diverse networks of public, private and civic institutions – are investing in and building the many things that make communities good places to live.” For a comprehensive overview of the survey findings and a discussion of how cities fared across the categories, download the report “Profiles in High-Performance Government: Cities on the Move.” “Equipt to Innovate” is a joint initiative launched by Living Cities and Governing magazine.

We’ve written extensively about the overabundance of expensive and unnecessary licensing in the states. With that in mind, we were excited to see an e-mail release come to us from the Institute of Justice at about 5:30 P.M. on April 23, 2018. We thought we’d pass the gist of it along, edited for space: “Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts signed the Occupational Board Reform Act on Monday afternoon, a landmark law that will systematically reduce the state’s burdensome and arbitrary licenses. Today, Nebraska has more than 170 different occupational licenses, which cover almost a quarter of the state’s workforce. “‘Far too many workers are spending their time earning a license when they should be earning a living,’ said Lee McGrath, senior legislative counsel at the Institute for Justice. ‘With this new law, Gov. Ricketts and the Nebraska Unicameral have transformed Nebraska into a national leader for slashing red tape and expanding economic opportunity. The Occupational Board Reform Act sets a landmark model for other states to follow.’ “As part of the new law’s rigorous “sunset review” process, every year, legislative standing committees will examine one-fifth of the state’s occupational regulations to identify any rules or laws that should be repealed or modified so that they are the least restrictive. Similar bills are also under consideration in Colorado, Louisiana, and Ohio. “’Regulation does not have to be a binary choice between licensing and no licensing,’ McGrath explained. ‘ least restrictive framework grants policymakers a wider array of regulatory options including private certification, inspections, bonding, and registration. Occupational licensing should only be a policy of last resort.'” It’s important to understand that licensing has its place in states, in order to protect the citizenry. No one would particularly want to see surgeons wielding a scalpel without the appropriate licensure. But when it comes to licensing for florists — well, there’s a bit difference between cutting a heart and cutting a bunch of red roses.

Utah has voted to disclose a long-term forecast for revenues and expenditures. And boy, does that make us happy. Over the course of years, we’ve been involved in a great many projects that evaluated states, counties or cities in terms of their success in a variety of management or policy areas. The frustration of these exercises, frequently, is that it’s difficult to see the payoff from the recommendations we make. That doesn’t mean we haven’t influenced governmental actions on a number of occasions. It’s just that it’s frequently difficult to prove the cause and effect. We bring this up as a means of telling you about a happy event, involving a new long-term forecast for revenues and expenditures,  that followed the Volcker Alliance’s release of Budget Report Cards for Utah and forty-nine other states earlier this year as well as the study Truth and Integrity in State Budgeting: What is the Reality? published in November 2017: Utah legislators took heed of the Volcker Alliance’s recommendations and are beginning to issue a long-term forecast for its expenditures and revenues. As senior project consultants for the Volcker Alliance, we were deeply involved — along with a diligent crew of Volcker employees and contractors as well as a number of universities — in this effort and we wanted to brag a bit. The easiest way to do that, as you’ll see, is to excerpt from the press release issued by the Volcker Alliance a few days back: “The House and Senate of the State of Utah unanimously passed House Bill 452 to institute multiyear [forecast]  estimates for state revenues and expenses as advocated by the Volcker Alliance. . . “The new Utah law, titled Legislative Fiscal Analyst Amendments, requires the Office of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst to evaluate current and long-term trends relating to taxes and federal fund receipts and requires the initiation of a three-year cycle of analysis on revenue volatility and other budget matters. “William Glasgall (pictured here), senior vice president and director of the Volcker Alliance’s state and local initiatives, said, ‘in fiscal 2015 through 2017, only nine states received average A grades for their budget forecasting procedures in our study. The Utah legislation addresses some of the areas in which Utah could improve its budget practices. It is gratifying to see the positive changes Utah has introduced and we look forward to assisting other states to introduce similar improvements. Our goal is to provide tailored insights and tools to help elected officials, investors, policy advocates, and citizens determine and improve their state’s fiscal governance and sustainability... “In floor speeches House Majority Leader Brad R. Wilson and Senator Kevin T. Van Tassell both credited the Volcker Alliance with providing the impetus for the bill. In his remarks, Senator Van Tassell referred to the Alliance’s grades for Utah’s budget practices and said ‘One of the areas where Volcker Alliance . . . said Utah could improve [is] longer term budgeting. This bill addresses that goal and strengthens our tradition of planning for the worst and hoping for the best.’

A high school graduate may cradle a diploma. But that might not be nearly enough to get into a state university. “High school graduation rates have soared across the country over the last decade, accompanied by the cheers of educators and lawmakers alike,” reports the Center for American Progress in a recent report. “But in the vast majority of states, simply attaining a high school diploma does not qualify [a graduate] to attend a public university.” The gist of the report is this: Every state has different requirements for coursework in subjects like math or science, in order to get a diploma. Some vary in that they look for demonstrations of “mastery” rather than specific classes. There’s nothing wrong with that, in and of itself. But public universities in the states have their own criteria for classwork to qualify for admission, and they are often not aligned with the requirements for a high school diploma. This means that the universities don’t believe that high school diplomas require an education with sufficient rigor to deserve a place in their incoming classes. And that just doesn’t make sense. Co-author of the report, Laura Jiminez says, “Within a state, it should be clear — and it should be aligned — that if I go to a public high school system, I should be eligible for a public university system in my state . . . There really just isn’t agreement within the states about what it means to be college- and career-ready, and that’s why we’re seeing these different sets of policies.” One of the biggest shortcomings is that nearly half the states don’t require the kind of foreign language education that the state schools look for. One powerful example, according to the report: “In California, home to perhaps the best-regarded public university system in the world, entry requirements for math, English, foreign languages, and art at University of California and California State schools all exceed completion requirements at California public high schools.”

“Illinois hasn’t had truly balanced budgets for more than 15 years,” reports Illinois Policy, an independent organization generating public policy solutions aimed at promoting personal freedom and prosperity in Illinois, “And state spending has far outpaced growth in residents’ incomes. These are two reasons why Illinois is in desperate need of a spending cap that ensures residents are getting a state government they can afford. But there’s another key reason Illinoisans need a spending cap: lawmakers can’t reliably figure out how much money they have to spend each year, with state officials consistently producing revenue projections that don’t match one another or the actual amount of revenue the state ends up generating.” It’s that last line that really alarms us. Illinois can blame its fiscal mess — including the nation’s lowest bond rating — on all sorts of things; many of them dating back for years, like its failure to adequately fund state pension plans. But the first step, as far as we’re concerned, to putting together any kind of budget that can be both politically palatable and fiscally sound, is to start with the right revenue estimates. And that’s next to impossible, thanks to state law! According to the Illinois Policy Report, “The executive estimate comes from the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget, or GOMB, and is used by the governor in his annual budget proposal. A second estimate comes from the legislative Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, or COGFA. Unfortunately, these two estimates rarely match either each other or the amount of revenue that actually ends up coming in.” The alternative, of course, is consensus revenue estimating. As we wrote for the Volcker Alliance a couple of years back, “Consensus revenue forecasts are made by a group of contributors, often involving the legislature, executive branch, economists, and representatives of the Democratic and Republican parties. The point of a consensus forecast is to make it easier for policymakers to concentrate on expenditures instead of arguing about whether the revenue estimate was politically driven. While consensus revenue forecasts are not necessarily more accurate than ones produced by a governor’s budget office, the process is likely to go more smoothly when all the parties involved in forming a budget agree on a single revenue figure.” And not to belabor the obvious, that’s exactly what Illinois needs in order to come up with balanced budgets: a process that goes more smoothly.

When it was discovered that many of Donald Trump’s top advisers were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), forcing them to keep quiet about what happens in the White House, an outcry ensued. As a Washington Post editor wrote, these agreements are “not just oppressive, but constitutionally repugnant.” But it’s not just the federal government trying to keep employees mouths sewed shut, either through “confidential agreements” or “non-disclosure contracts,” according to a column by Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene that was released on governing.com on April 5. Following is a summary of the piece, with sections drawn directly from the Governing column. It’s been 24 years since 1984 as Orwell predicted it. But this kind of thing sounds like it was torn out of the pages of his book. Montana, for example, has had a reported escalation of confidential settements between employees and the state, according to the Governing article, which also related that, “in Philadelphia, reports of sexual harassment — and a subsequent settlement for one employee –led to calls for Sheriff Jewell Williams to resign and for the city to reconsider how NDAs and settlements are applied in cases of sexual harassment.” The issue is particularly problematic for potential whistleblowers. “At the federal level,” the column stated, “a whistleblower’s ability to report wrongdoing is strongly protected, but state laws tend to be weaker, vary dramatically and may not be known to employees, says Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, an organization dedicated to protecting whistleblowers. “He worries that any kind of agreement that curtails public employees’ free speech could deter them from flagging problems. “He worries that ‘There are administrative and legal remedies that would allow employees to break nondisclosure agreements or speak out or blow the whistle despite a confidential settlement,’ he says. ‘But the mere existence of the agreement is highly chilling.’” Take a look at the full article. This is important stuff.