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The state's governor, a Republican, and the mayor of its largest city, a Democrat, discuss how they are working together to advance a common agenda.

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The twin forces of permanent fiscal scarcity and tectonic demographic shifts will greatly alter the relationships among the levels of government. Sooner or later, there will be some great sorting out of responsibilities among the federal government and the cities, counties and states as it becomes clearer that the money isn't there to support the duplication and overlap of services. How should this play itself out in Georgia? What changes, if any, do the state's cities and counties need? What kind of leadership are they looking for from Governor Deal and Mayor Reed?

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Attracting, training and retaining highly talented and motivated staff is critical to achieving high-performance government, and it has never been more difficult. Layoffs, furloughs, pay freezes and cutbacks have taken a toll on the attractiveness of public service, as has the often-denigrating portrayal of government employees in our public discourse. Today's top managers need innovative ideas for staffing and succession planning. This session will explore what can be done in the current environment to create a skilled and committed workforce in city, county and state government.

Additional Invited Speakers:
Duriya Farooqui, Chief Operating Officer, City of Atlanta

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In "Collaborate or Perish! Reaching Across Boundaries in a Networked World," Zachary Tumin of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and William Bratton, former police chief of Los Angeles, New York City and Boston, make the point that really big goals with really big payoffs require collaboration. Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has a big goal: He wants to make his city the logistics hub of the Western Hemisphere. Accomplishing that requires securing regulatory approvals and funding for the deepening of the Port of Savannah, which would open the port to the world's largest cargo container ships. Achieving the goal of making Atlanta a global logistics hub would be an economic-development win that would lift the Atlanta region and the state of Georgia for generations. This session will explore pathways to regional collaboration aimed at achieving genuine economic development.

Additional Invited Speakers:

Robert D. Yaro, President, Regional Plan Association of greater New York

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Few economic-development endeavors have been as ambitious and perilous as Thomas Jefferson's decision to purchase the Louisiana Territory from France and then to send Meriwether Lewis and William Clarke to see if it contained a practical water route to the Pacific. How did Jefferson have the vision to see into the future and know that exploration and risk were part of ensuring our growth and success?

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According to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, pensions account for about 3 percent of all state and local government spending, which is down from about 4 percent in the 1980s. In Georgia, pensions account for about 2.17 percent of state and local government spending, but some believe that pension costs are growing at an unaffordable pace. Another huge potential cost is retiree health-care benefits. The most recent estimate for the state's liability for other post-employment benefits is in excess of $15 billion. As the number of state and local government retirees grows in relationship to the number of active employees, it becomes increasingly important to manage these costs while not impairing government's ability to maintain a quality workforce. In this session, we will take a careful look at how best to balance these costs and benefits.

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For decades, the research evidence has been clear that successful regions are those with well-functioning infrastructure systems. In transportation, water, wastewater treatment, energy and other areas, these systems provide the basis for both quality of life for residents and economic productivity. A certain critical mass of both capital and expertise is required to create and maintain these systems, and that threshold is getting ever higher. Advances in technology, more stringent regulatory requirements and increasingly complex financing mechanisms are putting needed infrastructure beyond the reach of individual governments. In this session, we will explore how governments can work together to meet the infrastructure challenge.

Additional Invited Speakers:
Robert Yaro, President, Regional Plan Association of Greater New York

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Can governments learn? There is no learning without mistakes, and yet governments historically have had an extremely low tolerance for errors. For that reason, the term "government innovation" might seem an oxymoron. In his powerful new book, "Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder," Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues that in today's complex and interconnected world, organizations that thrive will be those that build systems that fail early, often and small and thus allow for quick and relatively painless recoveries that enable them to learn from mistakes without real damage. High-performance governments are those that take calculated risks and that can measure and predict the potential reward for the risks they take. These issues are especially salient, for example, in the areas of health and human services, in general, and implementation of health-insurance exchanges, in particular. In this session, we'll explore how successful governments balance innovation and risk and how they measure their return on investment.

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Regional Collaboration - Functional Consolidation and Shared Services

It is the paradox of region and place. To achieve efficiency in service delivery, we need the economies of scale and major investments that regionalism can support. But people want to live in distinctive communities, unique places that they identify with themselves and that they feel they can control. So while the benefits of consolidating governments are often obvious, actually merging together two or more governments into one is politically very difficult and thus very rare. Consolidating functions such as purchasing or sharing services such as policing or fire suppression can offer many of the same benefits as jurisdictional consolidation. This session will explore how functional consolidation and shared services can help communities better meet the needs of their constituents.

Additonal Invited Speakers:
Sid Johnson, Commissioner, Georgia Department of Administrative Services

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Join the GOVERNING staff, our sponsors, our speakers and your colleagues as we rehash the highlights of the day over drinks and appetizers.