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From Governing’s
Grading the Counties introductionFebruary 2002 issue
THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT
Report Card:
It has not been an easy transition. Roddey came into office with a laundry list of changes he thought would benefit the county, but most of the laundry is still in the hamper, blocked from implementation by turf conflict among the council, the executive and the numerous separately elected county officers.
One of Roddey’s first major initiatives was a move to merit-based hiring. Until 2000, Allegheny’s human resources system was based mostly on old-fashioned patronage. But merit-based hiring has been held up by challenges from the controller and coroner, who insisted they were already doing it.
Human resources may be the major obstacle in the way of managerial progress. The county’s new HR director, Allison Lee-Mann, notes that until just recently, her office was seen as a place “to push paperwork through and that’s about it.” But, she adds, “we’re not just here to push the paper anymore.” Lee-Mann faces an uphill battle: Decades of patronage and inconsistent personnel policies have left virtually all of the county’s HR procedures in need of overhaul.
Meanwhile, Allegheny’s finances make headlines almost daily. The county conducted its first comprehensive property reassessment in more than four decades last year, and was swamped by about 90,000 appeals, which will tie up the court system for months. Successful challengers have seen their assessments reduced by an average of 14 percent. County budgeting, which was problematic even during the flush years of the late 1990s, has become even more difficult. The county closed a 2002 budget gap by using $19 million in one-time funds, and its reserves have dropped to a dangerously low $9.7 million.
Positives: Proceeded with gutsy and much-needed property reassessment, though appeals have bogged down process; financial data accessible to public; bid notices posted electronically, using reverse auctions, in which suppliers bid for the lowest price; recent rise in bidding threshold from $10,000 to $30,000 created more efficiencies.
Negatives: Budget out of balance; one-time moves to balance budget over past several years include reduced pension contributions, sale of assets and use of emergency funds; future pension, sick leave and vacation liabilities aren’t estimated; some procurement procedures antiquated; contract management needs work; procurement system doesn’t produce necessary data; financial systems don’t make real-time information available to county agencies.
Positives: Established criteria used to choose projects; quarterly project review meetings; projects tracked at department and central level; beginning data collection to track asset condition; reorganization of public works department resulted in efficiencies.
Negatives: No estimates of operating or maintenance costs; monthly project reports insufficiently detailed; inventories aren’t updated frequently; incomplete information on condition of buildings or extent of maintenance backlog; reactive rather than proactive maintenance program; information systems inadequate to manage capital programs; five-year capital plan lacks detail; little citizen outreach in planning.
Positives: Reorganization of HR department started in October 2000; effort to institute merit-based hiring under way; use of electronic systems to make personnel changes; new HR director trying to improve communication with employees.
Negatives: Much duplication of effort with highly fragmented HR process; job classifications woefully out of date; more than 75 percent of employees don’t receive formal performance appraisals; minimal central workforce planning; salaries need restructuring; employee termination very difficult; many union employees working under expired contracts.
Positives: Some departments conduct independent strategic planning and measurement efforts; performance audits useful.
Negatives: Almost no countywide strategic or long-term planning or performance measurement; no plans to begin. Says assistant county manager: “Strategic planning is a luxury we just don’t have right now.”
Positives: Infrastructure upgrade completed to facilitate systems integration; IT strategic plan being developed; movement toward IT centralization to eliminate inefficiencies; departments slowly adapting to centralized approval for IT procurement.
Negatives: IT transition committee reported county IT as “a deeply fragmented, uncoordinated, undisciplined set of management information systems and practices”; development and use of GIS has lagged; no two-way Internet transactions for citizens; little analysis before and after IT procurement and implementation; informal or nonexistent procurement and design standards; infrequent IT training; off-site storage in place for backup tapes but overall disaster-recovery plan lacking.
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or years, Allegheny was essentially a ward of the state of Pennsylvania, which continued to mandate government by a three-member board of commissioners long after that system had ceased to be effective. The state lifted the mandate in the 1970s, but efforts to pass a home-rule law, allowing the county to design its own governing body and its own tax structure, still languished for two more decades. Finally, in the mid-1990s, Allegheny’s three sitting commissioners threw their support behind home rule, even though it would effectively eliminate their own jobs. A home-rule measure found its way onto the county ballot in 1998, the voters approved it, and the old three-commissioner system was replaced by a charter that created an elected executive and 15-member council; Jim Roddey was elected in 1999 as the county’s first executive, and took office in January 2000.