Grading the Cities introduction THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT Report Card: Indianapolis Revenue Rank: 21 Form of Government: Mayor-Council Mayors: Stephen Goldsmith (1992-2000); Bart Peterson (took office 2000) City Council: 29 members (25 elected by district, 4 at large) FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT: B You can’t accuse Indianapolis of being unprepared for a rainy day. It carries a huge, undedicated general fund balance that just keeps on increasing, and right now approaches 30 percent. Some council members complain that’s way more than necessary. On the other hand, it protects against surprises. And Indianapolis has been running into surprises, because it has trouble estimating revenues. It has an excuse for that: Local property values aren’t assessed frequently enough, and so the tax money that property brings in each year is difficult to predict. Indianapolis is not strong at long-term financial forecasting, either. The controller makes projections for specific funds, but the city looks at the general fund only as far out as the next budget. Debt management, on the other hand, is very strong. Indianapolis is one of only a few large cities to receive a triple-A bond rating. The city’s financial reports are accurate, reliable and thorough, and the government has published a layman’s budget since 1994. Indianapolis is a leader in the use of cost accounting, a skill that is crucial here because outside contractors are used extensively to deliver goods and services. Nearly half of the city’s spending was contracted out in 1998. HUMAN RESOURCES: A- For years, Indianapolis was a textbook case in how not to run a civil service. Everything was political: If you worked for the city, in even the most menial capacity, you made a regular contribution to the appropriate political party. But those practices finally ended in the 1990s, and in a remarkably short time, the quality of the system has gone from dreadful to excellent. The Goldsmith administration rewrote personnel rules to eliminate any that interfered with sensible hiring. Recruiting is now strong here, as are training and programs to reward superior performance through incentive pay The hiring process is speedy, also. The average length of time between posting a job and hiring an employee is short: five days to two weeks. About the only regular complaint made by the work force is that numerous rounds of restructuring have left many feeling uncertain about the future. One weakness that needs fixing: Although Indianapolis has a great deal of data about its work force, it focuses on the short term and would benefit from a longer-term horizon in planning for its 21st-century needs. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: B This is another success story of the Goldsmith years. In the early 1990s, a city report acknowledges, “Indianapolis had few computers, no enterprise standardization, small pieces of the organization doing their own thing, no connectivity between departments and often between computers in the same department, and no connectivity to the outside world.” In the past few years, however, the city has developed a reasonably mature IT architecture. The financial and human resource information systems don’t provide the easiest access to information, but they’re useful. And the speedy hiring is largely attributable to IT improvement. Indianapolis has privatized many of its information technology processes by using a contractor that provides data center management and supports local- and wide-area networks, application development and maintenance efforts. Although there have been some hitches (the contractor hasn’t been getting the best prices for PCs, for example), by and large the experiment has been successful. Indianapolis’ Web site is excellent. When the trash pickup schedule was revised, citizens were able to type in their addresses and find out their new pickup day. The city is also ahead of the curve at providing transaction-based services. Parking tickets can be paid online, and businesses needing improvement permits can use the Internet to purchase them and process the paperwork. CAPITAL MANAGEMENT: B+ Indianapolis has an elaborate capital planning process that involves all agencies in the preparation of a four-year capital plan that is revised and submitted to the council every year. The document is not especially clear, however, and somewhat short on explanation or justification of projects. The city’s use of maintenance information is strong in the short term (public works can tell you the exact number of filled potholes), but needs improvement on broader issues, such as the percentage of total infrastructure in good repair. Generally, maintenance is well funded; no street maintenance costs have been deferred in the past couple of years. One problem is bubbling to the surface: Critics say the city has been neglecting its sewer system in its eagerness to do an impressive job on the more visible infrastructure above ground. When there’s heavy rainfall, raw sewage pours into the White River and its creeks. MANAGING FOR RESULTS: A- There is no formal, written citywide strategic plan in Indianapolis. But the government’s official vision, to create “a competitive city with safe streets, strong neighborhoods and a thriving economy,” is more than mere verbiage. All goals and performance measurements work toward one or all the elements in the vision statement. Generally, the performance measurement system has been evolving from one dependent on output to one in which outcome measures are more common. A monthly performance report tracks 150 different measures, each tied to a specific target. The monthly reports keep departments focused on the data. This year, the city is producing its first year-end operational report. AVERAGE GRADE: B+ Copyright © 2000, Congressional Quarterly, Inc. Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the publisher is prohibited. Governing, City & State and Governing.com are trademarks of Congressional Quarterly, Inc.