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Over the course of the years, we’ve repeatedly heard a series of mantras about the reality of state and local government. We’ve heard them from people at all levels of government and sometimes from established authorities. We’ve been accumulating a list of such maxims that are — unfortunately — not true. Of course, some of the ten items that follow are certainly valid  in some places. But we’ve heard them any number of times when the evidence demonstrates that they’re wide of the mark. We hate to use the word “lies” here. That seems to have become a word widely open to interpretation these days. So, just to be specific, what follows are explanations about the way things work that are frequently NOT the way things work. And the list is based on both our own experience, and the understanding of states and localities we’ve accumulated over the last quarter of a century. “We know we are in financially sound shape because we have to pass a balanced budget.” (from states) “It’s impossible to fire a public sector employee.” “We’ll solve this problem by setting up a commission. Or a study group.” “Our transparency website means our government is transparent.” “Buying new technology will be the key.” “Merit pay is pay based on merit.” “The key reason we have a huge unfunded liability in our pensions, is that our benefits are too rich.” “You should just look at the general fund in order to analyze our city or state’s financial condition.” “You can always trust our data.” “Our government can be run like a business.”

A couple of days ago we posted some details of the city benchmarking report that San Francisco’s Controller’s office put out (through its audit division). That first report focused on demographics, public safety and “livability”. Two more reports were released at week’s end. One is about transportation and finance. The other focuses on public health and the safety net. We highly recommend all three reports. The comparison should be interesting not just to San Franciscans, but to the other sixteen cities in the benchmark group: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Oakland, Philadelphia, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego, San Jose, Seattle and Washington D.C. (Not all cities are compared on all issues.)

“In great cities, spaces as well as places are designed and built: walking, witnessing, being in public, are as much part of the design and purpose as is being inside to eat, sleep, make shoes or love or music. The word citizen has to do with cities, and the ideal city is organized around citizenship — around participation in public life.” — Rebecca Solnit, from Wanderlust: A History of Walking.

We have always been fans of benchmark reports. They put performance measures into context, allowing cities, counties or states to see how they compare to their peers. Benchmarking isn’t easy, of course. Since the details behind government statistics vary there’s always a risk of comparing the quality of an apple to that of a pear. Or even a watermelon. They also require a certain amount of courage as there’s always the possibility that the benchmarking city will find itself in an unflattering position. That said, there’s a lot states and localities can learn from their neighbors. And there’s a big bonus for the peer entities. They get to take advantage of the results as well, without putting in the work. With that in mind, we would like to bring San Francisco’s benchmarking report, which was released on Valentine’s Day, to the attention of its comparison cities: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Oakland, Philadelphia, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego, San Jose, Seattle and Washington D.C. (Not all cities are compared on all issues.) Some selected facts that San Francisco’s controller’s office presented on how it compares to the other cities: San Francisco has the smallest percentage of residents who are under 18 – just 13 percent. Long Beach had the highest percentage under 18. Miami had the highest percentage of residents over 65 and Minneapolis had the lowest percentage over 65. San Francisco has the highest average income ($112,459) and (not surprisingly) the highest housing costs as a percent of income. Miami had the lowest average income and Denver had the lowest housing costs as a percent of income. Seattle had the highest number of library visits per resident (8) with San Francisco coming in second. Denver had the highest percentage of its population registered as library card holders (74 percent) and Los Angeles had the lowest (31 percent) D.C. had the highest percentage of the population over 25 to hold graduate degrees. Chicago spent the most per resident on parks ($354 for operating costs); Miami spent the least ($31 in operating costs). San Francisco was fifth on the list. ($148) D.C. had the highest number of street cleaning employees, (48 per 100,000 population); San Jose had the least (1 per 100,000). Oakland had the highest number of violent crimes per 100,000 daytime population, while San Diego had the lowest. Philadelphia had the highest police staffing per 100,000 daytime population while San Jose had the lowest. Philadelphia also had the highest jail population while Hennepin County, which handles jails for Minneapolis, had the lowest. There’s lots more in the report and the city controller’s office will be releasing two more benchmark reports this week. The next will be on transportation and finance and the third about population health and the safety net.

In early February, the U.S. Department of Transportation released its annual compilation of transportation stats, a document we always find fascinating. For readers who didn’t have the chance to sift through the 245 pages of data themselves, we’ve selected out the stats that particularly caught our eye(s). The good: • The percentage of structurally deficient bridges declined from 12.0 percent in 2010 to 9.6 percent in 2015. • The majority of airport runways are in good condition. Only 2 percent are considered poor. • About 4.8 million people walked or biked to work in 2014, about half a million more than in 2000. (Boston stands out among larger cities for people walking to work – about 15 percent do.) • Close to 2 million more people worked at home in 2014 than in 2000. • Less than 2 percent of passengers (14.1 million) waited in airport security lines for more than 20 minutes. • In terms of household expenses, transportation declined from 12.3 percent of the total in 2000 to 9.6 percent in 2015. • Deaths per hundred million miles of highway travel fell from over 5.50 in 1966 to 1.12 in 2015. The bad: • The use of carpooling has declined. Nearly 11 million more people drove alone to work in 2014 than in 2000. • Census Bureau reports show that in 1960, 10.3 percent of people walked to work, compared to 3.9 percent in 1990 and 2.7 percent in 2014. • The average annual delay per commuter rose from 37 hours in 2000 to 42 hours in 2014, a 13.5 percent increase, • Although the long-term decline in fatalities is still impressive, highway motor vehicle fatalities rose 7.2 percent in 2015. The highway injury count also increased in 2015 for the first time since 2012. • Pedestrian fatalities have increased from 12.3 percent of the total in 2010 to 14.5 percent in 2015. • Motorcycle injuries increased 62.7 percent from 2000 to 2014.

We’ve wondered lately about whether the intense focus on Presidential executive orders, in both the current and previous administrations, is having an impact on the nation’s governors. Our first instinct was to compare numbers issued, but we realized that their uses are so different that sheer numbers tell an uninformative story. Some governors use very few executive orders, mostly to declare states of emergency. In other states, executive orders may be plentiful, but relatively routine – used for appointments, for example. Do you follow the executive orders in your state? To make this easier, we’ve put together on interactive map with links to each states’ executive orders page. You’ll find it in the Resources section of our website. Of the nation’s new governors, Phil Scott of Vermont, has been among the most aggressive in utilizing seven executive orders in January to set the strategic direction of the state, create new departments (such as the Agency for Digital Services) , and merge others. New Governor Eric Greitens in Missouri has used the early executive orders in his administration to cut back on the creation of new regulations, establish a code of conduct for employees and establish a new position of Chief Operating Officer. (COOs are a topic we tackle in one of our next Governing columns, by the way.) Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb has also been an active signer of executive orders, though mostly he has used them to continue the initiatives of his predecessor, now Vice President Mike Pence. In a number of states, including Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Vermont and Wisconsin, governors have recently utilized executive orders to deal with aspects of the opiate epidemic and other kinds of substance abuse. Some governors have specifically used their more recent executive orders to place themselves in opposition to President Trump’s policies. For example, an executive order signed by Oregon Governor Kate Brown on February 2nd reaffirmed Oregon’s commitment to being “a welcoming, inclusive and compassionate place for all contributing members of our civic community including immigrants and refugees. In his State of the State address on January 24th, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker referred to his September 2016 executive order to set a plan for the state government to work with “local governments, business, and non-profits to develop plans to further protect our environment and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” In the recent past, governors have sometimes run into court challenges for their executive orders. Last July, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s executive order giving felons the right to vote was in conflict with the Virginia constitution. Similarly, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards’ executive order providing protections against discrimination for LGBTQ employees and contractors was struck down last year by the 19th Judicial District Court.

Massachusetts auditor Suzanne Bump has often spoken out about the problem of underfunded maintenance, which may conserve government dollars in the short-term, but creates ballooning future costs and a limited ability to deal with them long-term. Case in point: The February newsletter from her office draws attention to a municipal impact study, which found that Massachusetts municipalities face $17.8 billion in water infrastructure needs over the next 20 years. Climate shifts and economic development will add to that cost burden, she said. The report identifies the greatest needs in the wastewater treatment area, followed by clean water delivery and stormwater management. It suggests a new state water fund to support local water infrastructure projects, but also notes that many local governments have failed to take advantage of loans and grants that are already available. The auditor’s report was based on a survey, which garnered responses from 146 Massachusetts cities and towns (about 42 percent of the total and 88 percent of the Commonwealth’s cities of 50,000 plus population.)

We clearly remember a comment made to us years ago by the budget director of Cuyahoga County in Ohio. We were talking about the general lack of understanding of county government. She sighed and made the following poignant comment. “I’ve worked for Cuyahoga County for more than a decade and my mother still thinks I work for the City of Cleveland.” Counties are hardly inconsequential. There are 3,069 county governments in the U.S., which have 3.6 million employees and spend over half a trillion dollars annually. But many Americans have no idea what counties do or how they operate. Why? Bill Chiat is director of the California’s CSAC Institute for Excellence in County Government, which provides ongoing professional development classes to county managers and other high level staff who work in California’s 58 counties. Here’s what he told us. “I’ve often thought about this. We have an overall problem that people aren’t engaged with their local government. But there’s a popular understanding of what a city does and not as much understanding of what a county does. “Most people aren’t even aware that counties provide services. In California, the services that counties provide are the invisible services that many voters don’t know or care about – human services, criminal justice. They don’t realize that the District Attorney is a county service or that food stamps are coming through the county. But that’s the challenge. A lot of what counties provide are not popular things. “Even if you think about movies that involve the public sector, there’s always city hall. When was the last time you saw a county administration building in a movie? People say, ‘I’m going to fight city hall.’ Nobody says, ‘I’m going to take this fight to the county board chambers. “One of the issues is that counties vary so much. What a city does is pretty universal across the United States and across the world. But what a county does varies so much from state to state. It’s hard to say what counties do and have it ring true across the country.”

“There are not enough jails, not enough police, not enough courts to enforce a law not supported by the people.” — Hubert H. Humphrey

There’s been a great deal written about the legalization of marijuana in the states, much of it about potential tax revenues. But here’s an angle you probably haven’t become aware of. When cannabis is legal, outlets for its sale just add to the list of institutions that will need to be inspected. The problem is that inspections in the nation’s cities are often backed up woefully, according to our latest column in Governing magazine. The list of places that legally require periodic inspections by government employees just starts with food stores, dairies, barber shops, elevators, dental offices, x-ray facilities and on and on and on. We can recall being fascinated as children, in New York City, by the posted list of inspector’s signatures in every elevator around (they’re now available “on request,” not posted.) But it never occurred to us then that we were surrounded by a city full of inspectors who aimed at keeping us safe and sound. As our Governing article says, “the dangers of insufficient coverage are very real. An outbreak of hepatitis in Oklahoma, for instance, emanated from an uninspected dental office. In December, some 36 lives were lost in the deadliest fire in the history of Oakland, California. Though cause and effect isn’t entirely clear, the California Grand Jurors’ Association reported that “two years before the . .. . fire, the Alameda County civil grand jury sounded the alarm about deficiencies in the Oakland Fire Department’s inspection bureau – saying the city wasn’t even trying to check a third of the 12,000 commercial properties that were supposed to be examined every year.” Why aren’t there sufficient inspections? A shortage of staff, which is a byproduct of tight budgets. One partial solution, offered by Ken Levine, the director of Texas’ Sunset Commission is that some required inspections may be overdoing it; regularly checking out facilities that rarely have problems. “He recommends that if a particular entity is inspected every two or three years,” we wrote, “and no violations are found over a 20-year period, it may well be reasonable to cut down on the required frequency.”

We’ve recently seen a spate of local government audits that look at ways to stop negative police-community events before they happen. A sampling: In Washingon’s King County, the auditor noted that in the last five years, the county has paid $21 million in legal claims that are linked to Sheriff Office actions. Ideally, the county’s early intervention system, which seeks to improve officer performance, would seem to be a way to reduce law enforcement-community tensions.  But the audit, released at the end of January, found the program falls short of reaching its potential. Some problems cited: The period used to track “concerning behavior” is too short – just 90 days, whereas best practices suggest a much longer look-back period would be better. In addition, alerts of problematic behavior have been handled inconsistently by commanding officers, with some of the potentially useful information collected by the system going unused. In December, the Lawrence, KS, city auditor looked at the response of law enforcement to individuals with mental illness – a topic that is often in the headlines in many cities and counties around the country. The auditor’s recommendations are geared to helping the city’s new mental health squad do the best job it can in improving interactions between law enforcement and individuals with mental illness. The audit has generally positive comments to make about the city’s plans, but notes that clearer delineation of goals and objectives would be helpful and that the city could use a more comprehensive process for collecting and evaluating data about encounters. (This is a refrain we hear all the time, by the way.) Plans call for greater collaboration with city agencies that provide mental health services, but, as the audit says, “capacity for providing treatment and services remains uncertain.” Several months earlier, in September, 2016, the Austin city auditor looked into the process that’s in place to handle citizen complaints about their interaction with police. The audit found barriers to filing complaints and inconsistency in the way they’re handled. “These issues may lead to a more negative perception of law enforcement and erode the public trust,” auditors said. The city’s Office of the Police Monitor, which was set up about 15 years ago, is designed to “promote mutual respect between the Austin Police Department and the community it serves,” but the audit noted that its ability to provide oversight of the complaint process is limited. The audit has many separate recommendations directed at the Police Monitor, the Chief of Police and the City Manager. These recommendations include calls for better oversight, better communication to the public, increased staff knowledge about handling complaints and improvements in data collection. In addition, the San Jose Independent Police Auditor, along with the Mayor and other city officials and business CEOs, held a forum in late January to launch an 18-month campaign “to develop greater trust and better partnerships between law enforcement and San José residents in order to achieve a safer community.” A plea to state and local government auditors: If you have audits coming up on the important topic of police-community relations, or would like us to feature audits that we missed, please let us know!

A little while ago, we wrote a column for Governing magazine about succession planning. The thrust of our work was that only a small fraction of governmental entities are sufficiently prepared to replace employees from within when they quit or retire – and that those that do tend to see very positive results. We were grateful to receive a note from Ted Zaleski, the Director of Management and Budget in Carroll County, Maryland, which has a population of about 170,000 according to the 2010 census, and adjoins Baltimore County. As he wrote, it’s “pretty hard to argue against succession planning though there is a case to be made for ‘new blood’. I think most local governments would think good succession planning would be desirable.” But then Zaleski went on to write that “implementation can be difficult,” and provided a list of some things that can get in the way: No candidate. You can have a perfectly competent staff without anyone being right for the next job. Uncertain need. We will all need to be replaced someday, but when is more certain in some situations than others. Other opportunities. People who want to move up might not stick around until the opportunity opens where they are. Unhappiness with the current arrangement. I can think of people who were great candidates to move up, but left because they didn’t want to work for the person in the position. No interest. Sometimes an attractive candidate doesn’t want the job. Sometimes the pay increase often doesn’t seem worth the extra headaches, especially if you become an at-will employee.