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We love cities. Though we moved out of Manhattan a few years ago for the little town of Bethel, Connecticut, we’ll live the rest of our lives thinking of ourselves as New Yorkers, while still enjoying a place where you can find deer crossing the street at night and the supermarket checkout person knows us by name.   But to go back to where we began: We love cities. We love songs about them (“I Left My Heart in San Francisco), TV shows set in them (Seinfeld) and Broadway musicals where they are part of the story (Chicago, obviously).   Finally, we believe it’s true for many metropolises (and not just New York) that if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. With that in mind, and to give our brains a break from a week in which all the news is coming out of Washington D.C., we’ve gathered a dozen lovely quotes from works of fiction about them. Some we knew. Some we found online. And others came from our big fat shelf of quotation books. Here they are (and if you’d like to share favorites of your own, we’d love to hear them):   ·        “All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful, but the beauty is grim.” Christopher Morley, “Where the Blue Begins”   ·        “When they fall in love with a city it is for forever. As though there were never a time when they didn’t love it.” Toni Morrison, “Jazz”   ·        “The {World’s] fair taught men and women steeped only in the necessary to see that cities did not have to be dark, soiled, unsafe bastions of the strictly pragmatic. They could also be beautiful.” Eric Larson, “Devil in the White City”   ·        "A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart ..." Charles Dickens, “A Tale of Two Cities”     ·        “Cities are not people, but I think they might be sentient.” N.K. Jemisin, “ City We Became”   ·        “The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Great Gatsby”   ·        To live in a city is to take part in and to propagate its impossible systems. To wake up. To go to work in the morning. It is also to take pleasure in those systems because, otherwise, who could repeat the same routines, year in, year out?” Ling Ma, “Severance”       ·        “Cities are never random. No matter how chaotic they might seem, everything about them grows out of a need to solve a problem. In fact, a city is nothing more than a solution to a problem, that in turn creates more problems that need more solutions, until towers rise, roads widen, bridges are built, and millions of people are caught up in a mad race to feed the problem-solving, problem-creating frenzy.” Neal Shusterman, “Downsiders”   ·        “For those who are lost, there will always be cities that feel like home.”  Simon Van Booy, “Everything Beautiful Began After”     ·        “The most beautiful city in the world is one where you are happy.” Erich Maria Remarque, “The Night In Lisbon”   ·        “What is the city but the people.” William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Coriolanus #CityQuotes #CitiesInFiction #B&GReport #BarrettandGreeneInc #DedicatedToStateandLocalGovernment

Walter Winchell, one of America’s most popular syndicated gossip columnists and radio commentators from the 1920s through the early 1960s once called West Haven, Connecticut “the most corrupt little city in America.”   Clearly there was a fair amount of hyperbole there – and we have no idea why he singled out West Haven (truth in advertising: it’s the hometown of Richard Greene, co-author of this piece). But in recent years, it appears that West Haven has endured some problems which bring Winchell’s snide comment to mind. There are a few examples but the one which has achieved the greatest notoriety was the theft of more than $1.2 million in COVID relief funds by a Connecticut state representative who was also employed as administrative assistant to the city council of West Haven.  As the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut   explained in a release, “he conspired with others to steal these funds and other West Haven funds through the submission of fraudulent invoices, and subsequent payment, for COVID relief goods and services that were never provided.” We bring this up not to bash West Haven, or to leave anyone with the idea that government is riddled with bad guys (anyone who reads our work knows we think quite the opposite) but to make the point that corruption isn’t exclusively the province of larger cities, but wrinkles its way into the life of smaller cities, as well.   A couple of years ago, we wrote a column in Route Fifty  about Durango, Colorado. In that community, which is the biggest city in rural La Plata County and the location for a few key scenes in the film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, the longtime finance director, resigned in October 2019 and subsequently pled guilty to two felony charges related to  $712,000 in embezzled funds . At the time, our research also led us to a fascinating documentary called, “All the Queen’s Horses.”  That was all about a $53 million embezzlement that occurred over many years by the Dixon, Illinois comptroller, who worked in that small city (population currently about 15,000) from 1983 until her indictment in 2012. You can read our interview with the producer and director of the documentary, Kelly Richmond Pope , an accounting professor at DePaul University, here .   Apparently, no town is too small to be hit by corruption. Leyden, Massachusetts has a population of under 800. In April, a press release from the state’s Office of the Inspector General  revealed that “f ollowing an investigation conducted by the Office of the Inspector General, Daniel J. Galvis, Leyden’s former Chief of Police, was arraigned in Greenfield District Court today on numerous charges related to items embezzled from the Town of Leyden.”   The problem in communities like these is frequently the lack of appropriate oversight. And though they may not have the kind of staff that large cities do, once taxpayer dollars are involved, keeping tabs on what’s being done with them is a clear duty that community leaders assume. As a 2016 article  from Columbia Law School explained, “ While news headlines often focus on issues of corruption within state or federal governments, the effects of corruption within local municipalities is equally problematic. First, there are many thousands of small cities and towns in the United States, depending on one’s definition. And these governments receive and spend billions of dollars in public funds. For obvious reasons, however, small cities and towns typically operate with few employees, and have limited resources to expend on non-essential personnel and programs.   “This means that the very nature of small municipalities makes them susceptible to corruption, because their small size and workforce do not allow for the kind of oversight and enforcement mechanisms that larger cities, state governments, and the federal government can employ. Nor can small towns usually count on oversight from county-level or state oversight mechanisms, at least absent a specific complaint about egregious conduct that is deemed important enough for higher-level officials to pursue.”   There’s certainly truth to that, but it doesn’t mean that smaller communities can just run away from the battle because they don’t have a big enough army. As the city manager of Durango who took over after the scandal told us in an interview that followed the Route Fifty article , cities with smaller populations can model themselves on bigger cities and not view size as a barrier. “Some people who have not been in a bigger city have this shield. ‘Oh, no. Can’t do that. . . They have more resources than we’ll ever have.   “I think there’s ways where you can scale a lot of those things. I may not have a 30-member accounting department, but I have 15 and I can be able to do some things in a better way. “I think sometimes the bravado of coming from a small town or representing a small town (makes us think) we can’t do it like bigger towns. There’s a lot of processes that are out there that I think you can definitely scale down so as not to be intimidated by the processes of bigger areas. Look at them and say. ‘What can I bring in?’"   #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentFraud #StateandLocalGovernmentCorruption #CityCorruption #CityFraud #SmallTownEmbezzlement #PublicEmployeeEmbezzlement #SmallCityInternalControl #LocalInternalControl #LocalGovernmentOversight #StateandLocalGovernmentOversight #SmallCityOversight #B&GReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

Good day, Last week we were talking to an inquisitive person who is rising in the local public sector world. The conversation turned to performance management (one of our favorite topics) and the question was posed to us: “What do you think are the biggest impediments to more widespread use of that discipline? A few answers quickly sprang to our minds, including limited resources and difficulties hiring staff with the necessary skills. But we’re writing this note to you, state and local elected decision-makers, because the foremost thought in our minds was that the challenge is often you. Not all of you certainly. Not even most of you. But certainly, enough of you to encourage us to write this note. Over many years, we’ve talked to scores, maybe hundreds, of people who have dedicated their lives to managing government performance. And they often tell us (usually off the record) that it’s the mayors, councilmembers, governors and legislators who stand in their way. Sometimes solid performance management operations – including the emphasis on evidence-based practices, evaluations, and performance measurements – can be downplayed, unused or ignored. In more extreme instances, there have been threats to defund, denature or entirely shut down performance management operations altogether. Why are performance management efforts underused? For one thing, performance measures that have the potential to inform the public about programmatic success can also point out failures. That can be highly useful for those who want to take steps to improve performance. But after a ribbon-cutting ceremony, who really wants to hear that a heralded program didn’t work out?    What’s more, in the real political world, negative data can be used to beat up on politicians when it comes to election time. As Marc Holzer, a well-known academic and a pioneer in the field of performance management, told us some months ago, “We have a lot of data out there and a lot of performance measures. But most citizens don’t have access to that because it’s not communicated to them. And in many cases, it’s deliberately hidden . . .” We blame some of our colleagues in the press for this phenomenon. It’s always been the case that bad news drives out good news, which justifiably may make some of you wary that reporters will be sour cherry picking the bad news from a performance report – even one that is largely positive. We hope we’ve established that we understand the motivations for wanting to push performance information aside. But when elected officials do so, they are missing the idea that people trust candor. As we wrote in Route Fifty  in February, “People mistrust what they don’t understand. They’re more inclined to have faith in an institution that is candid, even if it’s open about mistakes or ‘performance is proven to be poor,’ says Michael Pagano, dean emeritus of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois, Chicago. ‘If voters trust that the government is providing accurate information, they will continue to trust’” One group, in particular, that we’d suggest that you support are your performance auditors and evaluators, whether they come from the executive or legislative branches. Their reports contain the kind of vital, practical data and recommendations that can help make government run more efficiently and effectively. And when that’s the case, there will be lots to brag about when election time rolls around. #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalPerformanceMeasurement #StateandLocalPerformanceAudit #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #CityGovernmentPerformance #StateandLocalDataGovernment #CountyGovernmentManagement #StateGovernmentManagement #CityPerformanceAudit #CountyPerformanceAudit #StatePerformanceAudit #TrustInGovernment #ElectedOfficialsandPerformanceReporting #GovernmentPerformanceReporting #MediaGovernmentCoverage #RouteFifty #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

With the Fourth of July right around the corner, many Americans are looking forward to a day off from work, cookouts and fireworks. Yet according to a study released a year ago , four of ten can’t tell you what actually happened that day. And even the remaining six out of ten who were given credit for getting the  “correct” answer cited by the survey got it wrong too! That’s because the study said the right answer was “the signing of the Declaration of Independence,” which didn’t actually happen that day altogether. In fact, July 4th was the day when the Constitutional Congress first approved the final wording of the document. It wasn’t signed until August 2nd. And the Congress actually decided to declare independence two days earlier, on July 2nd. (Truth in advertising: We had to look all that stuff up, on ConstitutionFacts.Com . ) We bring all this up because the Fourth of July gives us an excuse to get on our soapboxes and complain about the lack of civics literacy in America – specifically in the area we spend our lives covering: state and local government. The most recent data we could find about the knowledge most Americans have about their states came from a 2018 study by Johns Hopkins University  (and it’s our guess that things haven’t gotten any better since then). A few of the facts that study uncovered: More than half of respondents didn’t know if their state had a constitution. About three quarters didn’t know if there were special purpose districts in their state About half didn’t know if their state had a one house or two-house legislature or whether it allowed ballot initiatives An astounding one of three couldn’t name their governor We’re just speculating here, but we suspect that the levels of knowledge about cities and small towns is probably somewhat better. We can’t imagine that very many adults can’t name their mayor. But when it comes to counties, as we wrote about eight months ago , “It's long interested us to see how many well-educated friends of ours have been almost entirely ignorant of the significance of counties. This may be largely explained because many of them are from New York City, and so aren’t living in a part of the country where the word ‘county’ comes up very frequently or in Connecticut, the one state that doesn’t actually have any functional county governments at all, except for those that serve as geographic boundaries on maps. Even notwithstanding our concerns about the lack of knowledge about state and local government, it appears that civics education generally is in a state of disrepair. As the American Bar Association  wrote about 18 months ago, The “neglect of social studies and civics is directly linked to decades-long education policies at the state and federal levels mandating testing of basic literacy (English Language Arts and math) through funding incentives. Specifically, and as a direct consequence of education policy, civic education has been chronically underfunded, both federally and locally. Currently, the federal government invests a mere 5 cents per K–12 student compared to $54 per student for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).” So enjoy your fireworks and hotdogs, and maybe if you’re moved to do so, find yourself a young person and explain what it’s all about. #StateLocalCivicEducation #CivicLiteracy #CityGovernmentManagement #CountyGovernmentManagement #CountyIgnorance #July4Knowledge #CivicEducation #StateLocalEducationManagementandPolicy

We get a great deal of information from the Internet for our work, and there’s little question that the easy access to tons of reports, studies, surveys, legislation, audits, budgets, meeting minutes, essays, graphs, etc., has revolutionized research and reporting on all fronts, not just state and local government.   But, despite the benefits that online information can bring to researchers, reporters, academics and practitioners, there are a multitude of flaws in this seemingly endless source of facts, figures and history.   For example, we’re repeatedly frustrated by the absence of dates on website pages. For example, the website for the State of Texas offers a seemingly useful directory of government services , including  information about licensing, vital records and business resources. A terrific idea, but the website page has no date attached, and so we can’t figure out a way for residents to know if the information to which the webpage links is up to date.   Then there are scholarly reports that pop up when searching for information about a topic. Readers are often in the dark about the timing of these papers which leaves them unable to tell whether the information is current or not.   One more problem on the dating scene: Legislative websites should be a good way to keep track of current legislation in the states. But we repeatedly run across sites that aren’t nearly up to date. For example, in early June, the office of West Virginia Governor Jim Justice issued a release proclaiming that “Gov. Justice signs legislation providing more than $80 million for West Virginia’s college students and higher education institutions.” That’s pretty big news in West Virginia, but as of mid-June, the legislative site  hasn’t taken note. In fact, the most recent legislation listed there dates back to March. We understand, theoretically and from personal experience, that it can be very time-consuming keeping websites up to date. But if states like West Virginia are tracking legislation on their legislative sites, it doesn’t feel like it should be too much trouble keeping them up to date – or at least close. Yet one more frustration with websites is that the links they provide are frequently out of service. The Pew Research Center  recently issued a report that found that “ Overall, 21% of all the government webpages we examined contained at least one broken link. Across every level of government we looked at, there were broken links on at least 14% of pages; city government pages had the highest rates of broken links.” Keeping the links on a website entirely up to date is a hugely daunting task. In fact, we may well be in a glass house throwing stones in this case, as we’re confident that a close perusal of our own site has links that have long since expired. Sorry about that. #StateandLocalGovernmentManagemnt #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #StateandLocalGaovernment #StateandLocalGovernmentTransparency #TimelyGovernmentInformation #PewResearchCenter #BrokenStateLocalWebsiteLink #StateLocalGovernmentInformationSharing #GovernmentInternetFrustrations #InternetFrustrationStateLocalGovernment #InternetFrustrationPublicSector #StateLocalGovernmentWebsiteFlaw #BarrettandGreeneInc

Over more than 30 years of covering state and local government, we can’t recall ever talking to a public sector manager who loved going to meetings. They may occasionally enjoy them, and they know that they need them. But, on the whole, the complaint that we hear most frequently goes something like this: “I’m spending so much time in meetings that I can’t get my work done.”   Even in the day of remote work, when many participants can attend meetings virtually, there’s a multiplier factor here. Let’s say that a manager calls a meeting with seven supervisors for a two-hour session. That’s eight people, including the manager, times two hours or a total of sixteen hours — or two full days of work for one person. That doesn’t even count the amount of time people should be taking to prepare for the gathering, and the snarky texts that follow along complaining about the waste of time.   The following, based on a number of conversations we’ve had over the years (as well as a certain amount of personal experience), are nine ideas for making meetings more productive, and possibly cutting down on resentment at their very existence. 1.     Whoever is running the meeting should be there exactly when the meeting is supposed to start. In the old days (not so long ago, really), this was a syndrome of meetings where everyone gathered around a conference table. But it’s got a new wrinkle for virtual meetings, when online participants can sit around awaiting the person who can let them into the virtual meeting room.   2.     Somebody should be taking really good notes, and — without taking too much time — distributing them to the men and women who were in attendance afterwards, who can then share them with others who would benefit by knowing what went on. With the advent of electronic transcription technology, this needn’t be a burden. 3.     If you set a meeting for an hour, and it doesn’t need an hour, don’t wait for the Red Sea to part. Just let those people go. 4.     If you set a meeting for an hour, every effort should be taken to have it end at the hours end. This may require cutting off people who want to join in the discussion in a way that can be very wordy. 5.     If you ask the participants in a meeting to identify themselves, ask them to do so in 30 seconds or less. 6.     Meetings should end with some time to discuss “next steps,” so that attendees will feel like this session led someplace except to the graveyard of hours they’ll never see again. 7.     Make sure the people in the room all get an agenda in advance. And by in advance, we don’t mean an e-mail that pops up 10 minutes before the gathering begins. 8.     Don’t fall into the trap of believing that there’s infinite time for the meeting during the first third, moving along at a decent pace in the second third, and then rushing in the last third — which often is when the group is trying to come to some conclusions. 9.     Finally, in hybrid meetings, make certain that the virtual participants are included as thoroughly as the people in the room.   #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #StateLocalPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalHumanResources #StateandLocalBudgeting #CityandCountyManagement #StateGovernmentMeetingManagement #CityGovernmentMeetingManagement #CountyGovernmentMeetingManagement #StateandLocalTimeManagement #StateandLocalLeadership #StateandLocalWorkforce #GoverrnmentSupervisorTraining #B&GReport #BarrettandGreene

When we attend social gatherings like weddings and are seated with people who don’t know us, one of the obligatory first questions exchanged is “And what do you do for a living?”    Whatever our tablemates answer, we always seem to have tons of questions for them. But when we talk about our work in terms of “helping states and local governments to run better,” instead of being beset by queries, frequently the response ranges from a polite quizzical smile to outright laughter. Few questions follow. The very idea that states and localities can and do improve the way they deliver services seems to be a humorously implausible notion to these new acquaintances. We think that this phenomenon has just gotten worse. We read all kinds of local newspapers, in order to do our work, and there seems to be a sad consensus forming that governments are just growing steadily less capable of solving the hard problems. We’ve written a fair amount recently about the decline of trust in government  and we suspect that this point of view is largely responsible. Since most of the people reading this B&G Report work with states and localities, we may be preaching to the choir, but just in the last couple of months here are some examples of the way governments are making accomplishments that are worthy of note: In mid-May, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced  a 35% reduction in shootings and 37% decrease in gun-related deaths between 2021 and 2023. Data from the first four months of 2024 also show a 35% drop compared to the average number of shooting victims over the past five years. A Tulsa Oklahoma initiative called Women in Recovery works with the courts and local governments to create a national model to take women off the path to prison and onto a road to a fulfilling self-sufficient life.  A growing number of states  are adapting ways in which workplaces can adapt so that individuals with disabilities can thrive. A national movement led by sheriffs   has been growing education programs in jails, improving internal conditions and culture and reducing recidivism. We could go on and on. And that’s not because we see the world through rose-colored glasses. We see plenty of things that aren’t heading in the right direction. It’s just that we care about solutions as much as we care about problems. Clearly, the increasingly partisan nature of government has provided another cause for doubt in governments’ capacity to solve problems. Let’s say that General Motors ran a series of ads claiming that Ford cars were likely to explode; and Ford ran its own series of ads claiming that General Motors vehicles had brakes that were defective. Nobody would be inclined to buy either brand. We think that’s very much the way things are working as people running for elective office run attack ads come election season. And the hyper-partisan world of the federal government has trickled down, like acid rain, on the governments of counties, cities and states. As long as there’s an insistent drumbeat about the perceived failures of previous administrations, how can anyone expect people to think that new administrations will be any better? Another factor contributing to the suspicion about the capacity of government to improve lives is that there’s been a trend to want quick solutions to long-standing problems. But overnight solutions to problems like homelessness, flaws in policing, or unsafe bridges just don’t exist. Patience is key. We’ve devoted our careers observing state and local government to exploring the incremental changes that can lead to major advances. For example, we’ve written extensively about the need for better data upon which to make decisions.  Right now, we’re working on developing a webinar – a joint venture between the American Society for Public Administration’s H. George Fredrickson Center for Social Equity and its Center for Performance and Accountability – about the use of data to help provide the tools necessary to develop a more equitable nation. But while we think that event will help provide information that will help cities and states to see their way to more equity, we know that one little webinar isn’t going to change the world. It’s just a small step in the process. But we feel confident that armed with appropriate information, progress can be made, not just in trying to create a more equitable nation, but in dealing with a whole host of problems that beset us. And that’s why we do what we do. Any questions? #DedicatedToStateandLocalGovernment #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentData #StateandLocalPerformanceMeasurement #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #StateandLocalDataGovernance #StateEquityandDEIPolicyandManagement #CityGovernmentPerformance #CityGovernmentManagement #CountyGovernmentManagement #StateEquityandDEIPolicyandManagement #CityEquityandDEIPolicyandManagement #StateLocalPolicyImplementation #AmericanSocietyForPublicAdministration #ASPA #HGeorgeFredericksonCenterforSocialEquity #CenterforAccountabilityandPerformance #CityandStateInnovation #StateandLocalEvidenceBasedPractice #StateandLocalEvaluation #B&GReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

A couple of weeks ago, we wrote a B&G report titled “ Is Speedy Government Good Government? ” in which we made the case that the pressure for states and localities to solve problems overnight can often lead to failed efforts. “Jumping into new initiatives. without the time for adequate preparation, may be great for elected officials anxious to make quick headlines,” we wrote “But glitter often tarnishes as time passes and efforts go through a rational progression of brainstorming, bringing in stakeholders, finding revenue streams, building a talent base, and forging through a political process that can sometimes favor inertia over momentum.”   That column seemed to strike a responsive chord among many of our readers, one of whom, Barry Van Lare, a very active fellow with the National Academy of Public Administration, commented on a related issue that we think is worthy of note.  "While inadequately staffed and hasty implementation can, and often does, lead to failure,” he wrote, “there is also a problem with the frequency of change. All too often potentially successful initiatives are abandoned well before they can reasonably be expected to produce results."   In our experience that’s absolutely true and it’s a pity. Over the years, we’ve seen many efforts that seem to have great promise fall by the wayside before they have the opportunity to prove their value. We’ve seen this happen repeatedly in the realm of education where new programs are put into effect, which in the real world will take four or five years to show progress, but then a new superintendent comes in is confronted by a school board impatient for results and tries something new (but not necessarily better, or maybe not as good).   Even the best programs often take time to have any impact, even when they’ve been carefully thought out beforehand. New staff sometimes must be hired, and existing personnel have to be trained (and sometimes there’s no money to do so, but that’s a different story). Progress rarely can accrue on the back of a good idea until the people charged with implementation are up to speed.   What’s more, sometimes terrific new programs have a whole host of little flaws that must be detected and dealt with before they begin to show their worth. Getting to visible solutions often requires an iterative process, with tweaks and changes necessary before results show improvement.   Delay in gathering, analyzing and disseminating data can also lead people to believe that state or local governments aren’t making things better for them. When an evaluation or performance measurement data comes out a year after a new program has been inaugurated, it’s generally based on the most recent data available, which frequently comes from before the effort was even begun. Administrators are likely to understand that this is just a timing issue, but when the local press picks up on the report, it’s all too easy to ignore the existence of the initiative and that, in turn, can make residents clamor for yet more change. Lurching from one initiative to another, without sufficient evidence of whether the first one worked or didn’t, isn’t a productive approach. Yet an impatient populace, who are increasingly losing trust in government, can push their leaders to forfeit the advances that might have been made, if they’d only had the time.   #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalPerformanceMeasurement #StateandLocalProgramEvaluation #StateandLocalGovernmentData #StateLocalPolicyImplementation #GovernmentProgramGraveyard #CityGovernmentManagement #CityGovernmentPerformance #StateandLocalHumanResources #HastyProgramImplementation #LaggingData #TrustinGovernment #StateandLocalWorkforce #StateandLocalProgramFailure #BarrettandGreeneInc #DedicatedtoStateandLocalGovernment

Not to be overly blunt, but we’ve grown sick and tired of hearing people complaining about how long it takes state and local governments to make dramatic improvements in the lives of their residents. Anyone who has been reading this website, or any of our other writing, will know that we’re firm believers that a band of dedicated people working in government can make important changes for the better. But they rarely happen overnight. Take for example, an article we recently wrote for Route Fifty  that focused on a handful of states which are taking important steps forward to create accommodations for potential workers who deal with a variety of “non-apparent” issues including autism. Since these kinds of issues had been ignored in the past, we thought that this was splendid news to share. But one of our readers wrote to us to say that she was “wondering why certain states are more anxious than others to begin these programs.” We understand the importance of quick action, but also know the complexity of culture, policy and organizational change and understand that it can take a fair amount of time for any initiative – no matter how important – to get traction more widely. Jumping into new initiatives. without the time for adequate preparation, may be great for elected officials anxious to make quick headlines. But glitter often tarnishes as time passes and efforts go through a rational progression of brainstorming, bringing in stakeholders, finding revenue streams, building a talent base, and forging through a political process that can sometimes favor inertia over momentum. Carrying this thought a step further, we’ve seen lots of instances when legislation actually moves too quickly to yield a successful outcome. Elected and appointed officials need to take the time and effort necessary to consider how the policy is going to be implemented. As a PWC study titled, “ Are public projects doomed to failure from the start ?” stated, “Political decision-makers and senior civil servants often have misconceptions about the capabilities and boundaries of project management. Project deadlines are often set on the basis of political debate rather than a realistic planning effort.” There’s an unfortunate phenomenon at work here. The more people insist that their leaders make changes overnight, the more likely it is that the new initiatives will not succeed. And the more failures accrue, the greater the pressures to get something new and exciting out the door – especially as election day approaches. There’s an anonymous quote we like that sums up our case: “Democracy is a slow process of stumbling to the right decision instead of going straight forward to the wrong one.”   #StateandLocalHumanResources #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalCultureChange #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalWorkforce #DeliberativeDecisionMaking #StateandLocalPolicyImplementation #PolicyImplementation

We’re not scared of AI. It doesn’t take much historical memory to know that pretty much any new technology brings out fear and trepidation. In fact, according to Techradar,  “When the Stockton-Darlington Railway opened in 1825, people feared the worst: the human body, surely, wasn't made to travel at incredible speeds of 30 miles per hour. People genuinely believed that going that quickly would kill you in gruesome ways, such as your body melting.” Over a century later, many were convinced that the arrival of television was going to ruin children’s eyesight and destroy the movie business altogether. As we noted in one of the two biographies  we wrote about  Walt Disney, film producers regarded television as “the monster,” and viewed it “with suspicion fearing it would keep audiences out of movie theaters.” And now here comes AI. We turned to ChatGPT for its view on this issue (Going to the source, seemed only fair.) It told us that “As AI systems become more sophisticated, there’s a risk that they may operate beyond human control or oversight.” Anyway, we feel pretty confident that while AI may have some unfortunate consequences, we don’t think it’s the stuff of nightmares. In fact, we’ve tended to write about many of the ways in which AI can help governments run more efficiently and effectively. But our eyes haven’t been closed to the downsides; the hazards of AI both in government and as a research tool. Here are five of the things that are on our mind: Many governments are working on policies designed to restrain improper uses of AI, and that’s a good thing. But based on years of watching how government regulations work, we worry that there’ll be insufficient oversight to make sure that the policies actually have been implemented. There’s an enormous amount of misinformation available in the AI-verse. We turned to ChatGPT to ask about ourselves, and after saying a bunch of nice things, it also mentioned that “they have authored or co-authored books such as “Balancing Act: A Practical Approach to Business Event Based Insights.” Having never heard of this book, we were sure we hadn’t written it and on investigation it turns out to have been written by Kip Twitchell  who works with IBM Global Business Services. It’s not only the bad information that’s the problem, it’s the information that isn’t even available through AI that can matter. Artificial Intelligence, after all, can only know what it can find by foraging the Internet, and a great deal of worthwhile knowledge hasn’t been digitized at all. This can include current information from smaller governments, remote geographic areas, groups of people whose sentiments or lives tend to go undocumented, or magazines, newspapers and journals that no one has ever made available in digital form. AI has the capacity to come to conclusions based on hidden biases. As an October 2023 brief from IBM  pointed out, “ Underrepresented data of women or minority groups can skew predictive AI algorithms. For example, computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems have been found to return lower accuracy results for black patients than white patients.” Also alarming to us is the commonplace notion that AI can make decisions for governments. It can certainly be a valuable tool, but as smart as AI may be right now (we won’t begin to think about the future), it can only serve as an advisor, not as a decision-maker.   For years now, we’ve advised against using the term “performance-based budgeting”, because we don’t believe that performance measures can be the sole guide to good budget decisions. We’ve always made it a point to talk about “performance-informed” budgeting.   The same goes for AI’s potential to help with decisions. It can inform them but shouldn’t be expected to make them. #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #StateandLocalGovernmentData #StateLocalGovernmentAIPolicyandManagement #CityAIManagement #StateAIMnagement #CountyAIManagement #StateandLocalTechnologyManagement #StateandLocalPerformanceMeasurement #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #StateLocalArtificialIntelligenceManagement #StateLocalArtificialIntelligencePolicy #GovernmentOversight #FearOfTechnology #GreeneWaltDisneyBio #StateLocalGovernmentRegulation #BarrettandGreeneInc

Employee surveys can provide extremely valuable information for supervisors, managers and HR officials in cities, counties, and states when they reveal both the negative and positive sentiments that employees have about their workforce. They have the potential to lead to decisions that will improve workforce satisfaction and retention of valued employees. But when employee surveys are viewed as nothing more than another form to fill out and there’s no feedback or sense that the surveys were ever seen by anyone who cares, then they can have the opposite effect. “When you do a survey, you are implicitly making a commitment to employees that you are going to share the results and do something about it,” says Bob Lavigna, senior fellow-public sector for UKG, a firm that provides workforce and human resource management technology. “And if you don’t follow through on that commitment you are going to damage trust.” We called Warren Kagarise digital engagement manager for King County, Washington to ask him about this issue and his advice was simple: “Once the survey ends, close the loop with respondents — even if the result is not flattering to the agency.” He went on to say that “if you’re not able to close the loop and give the acknowledgment that we heard from you and this is the next step in the process, people assume that you were never listening in the first place.” Of course, simply making the results of surveys available is only half the equation. It’s equally important to let the people who filled it out know what the organization intends to do about the problems that have surfaced. Furthermore, even if there’s nothing much that can be done, it will serve an entity well to explain why that would be the case. “I f for example there are complaints about compensation and there aren’t enough resources to raise pay, then it can be worthwhile educating employees about the value of the benefits to their total compensation,” advises Lavigna, “as benefits like health care or pensions can add on another 30 percent or more to that total.” At a time when many state and local governments are concerned about their turnover rates, employee surveys can help keep a satisfied workforce in place. But if those surveys are perceived as a sham exercise, everyone would be better off if they weren’t used at all. #StateandLocalHumanResourceManagement #StateandLocalHumanResources #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalEmployeeSurvey #EmployeeSurveyFollowUp #StateLocalTotalCompensation #EmployeeSurveyImpact #PublicSectorWorkplace #LaborManagementRelations #RobertLavigna #UKG #KingCountyDigitalEngagement #StateEmployeeSurveyFeedback #CityEmployeeSurveyFeedback #StateLocalEmployeeRetention

Over the years, we’ve chatted with high school and college students about the potential of careers working for state and local governments. All too often their responses are something like “Yeah, I suppose so,” in tones that make us believe that they’re not supposing anything at all, except that the whole thing sounds like a crashing bore. This is particularly dismaying for the two of us who have devoted our careers to this corner of the world. We are pretty sure that for the most part they have little or no idea what kinds of jobs local government can offer aside from the obvious ones like police, fire, and sanitation. Over the last several years, as the workforce shortage has afflicted many governments, we’ve reported about all kinds of outreach efforts that attempt to show the life of a government employee as a secure one with potential for advancement and the opportunity to benefit the world. These efforts are paying off in some places, but we think that many cities, counties and states are missing out on a potentially more persuasive approach. Instead of trying to sell jobs in local government as though that had much meaning, do a better job at showing potential candidates all the genuinely exciting missions that local government leads to. In a recent conversation with John Bartle, President-Elect of the American Society for Public Administration and Dean of the College of Public Affairs and Community Service at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, he expounded on precisely what we’re thinking. “My children are 25 and 23,” he told us. “And they and their friends are not excited to work for the government. However, they are excited to advance many of the goals that require government and the nonprofit sector: peace-making, disaster response, improving racial and gender equity in programs, fair taxation, labor rights, and child protection.” According to the National Center for Education Statistics the following are the most common majors for aspiring students to earn a baccalaureate diploma: business, health professions and related programs; social sciences and history; biology and biomedical scientists; psychology and engineering. All of these fields offer a plethora of jobs in government. And that doesn’t even count the “helping jobs,” like social work that are appealing to many. Okay, we admit that maybe the big dreams of many teens – to be professional athletes, movie stars or rock musicians – aren’t on the roster of job titles in government. But we do believe that outside of fantasy-land job plans, there are plenty of young people who aspire to help other people. Better educating them in the many opportunities that exist in the realm of government is a way to sell the brands of jobs that cities, counties and states can offer. #StateandLocalHumanResources #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalHiring #LocalGovernmentHiring #RecruitingNewGovernmentEmployees #RecruitingYoungPublicSectorEmployees #StateandLocalRecruitment #CityRecruitmentStrategy #CountyRecruitmentStrategy #StateRecruitmentStrategy #MarketingLocalGovernmentJobs #StateandLocalWorkforceShortage #WorkforceShortage #AmericanSocietyForPublicAdministration #ASPA #JohnBartle #UniversityOfNebraskaOmaha #AttractingYoungPeopleToGovernment