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From Governing’s
Grading the Counties introductionFebruary 2002 issue
THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT
Report Card:
But while diversity is making life more interesting, it is making government harder to manage. “Trying to govern this county isn’t an easy thing,” says Dan Nataf, who runs the Center for the Study of Local Issues. Nataf says it’s rare for a majority of residents to agree on any important issue--with the possible exception of the need to improve education.
Owens was elected county executive in 1998 after vowing to make schools her top priority. She has followed through, pumping millions in additional funding into the education budget. Many of those millions have gone toward school construction and rehabilitation, with about 70 percent of the county’s schools undergoing some work this past summer alone. Owens’ good relationship with Maryland Governor Parris Glendening has helped direct millions of state dollars to the county coffers during the past three years.
At the local level, however, it hasn’t been easy to keep the money flowing. Like other Maryland counties, Anne Arundel has declining income-tax revenues, and unlike most of them, it has to live under a tax cap, approved at the height of the 1992 recession, which prohibits the county from increasing property taxes by more than 4.5 percent a year or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower. Anne Arundel’s budget director, John Hammond, calls the cap “draconian.”
Owens was hit with a wave of criticism last year when she decided to run an even tighter ship than mandated by law, and didn’t raise property taxes even though the inflation rate would have allowed a 1.8 percent increase. She said she wanted to minimize the tax burden on seniors and working-class families. But many in and out of government believe it was a mistake not to increase the tax base by the allowable amount. “Every time we walk away from revenue, we’re walking away from it forever,” says Teresa Sutherland, the county auditor.
Positives: Surpluses used to fund one-time expenditures and pay-as-you-go capital projects; sufficient budgetary flexibility for managers; annual debt affordability report; adherence to stringent debt policy; new financial system has improved data retrieval; county’s pension system well funded; new procurement chief pushing modernization.
Negatives: Bookkeeping errors exposed in audit, resulting in separation of finance and budget offices; no formal requirements for replenishing rainy day fund; limited long-term financial projections; no independent body for investment and debt management; no formal procurement training; low formal bidding levels are restrictive and inefficient; antiquated procurement rules.
Positives: Powerful citizen Planning Advisory Board reviews and recommends capital projects; six-year capital improvement plan; extensive land use planning; public-private partnerships used to build some assets; implementing road resurfacing program; about $80 million spent on school repairs since 1998.
Negatives: Project-management system antiquated; lapsed construction schedules caused 15 schools to open late last fall; substantial road maintenance backlog; $400 million in deferred school maintenance.
Positives: More pay flexibility for new hires; IT talent developed in-house; continuous recruitment for hard-to-fill positions; non-represented employee pay scales recalibrated to bring in line with union employees; quarterly partnership meetings with unions; good employee feedback; developing career ladders; HR strategic plan in works.
Negatives: Antiquated computer system, with delayed delivery of new system; inadequate centralized workforce planning; multiple units negotiate at different times, making it difficult to set consistent policy; overturned decisions at personnel board level make managers less apt to terminate employees; personnel code tough to change.
Positives: Budget office conducts good informal analysis; some departments write strategic plans; measures used effectively in some agencies’ self-evaluation; auditor trying to complete more performance audits.
Negatives: Little demand for performance information among council and top administrative staff; no countywide strategic plan; performance measures don’t drive the budget; generally weak at soliciting coordinated public feedback; outcomes infrequently measured; baseline data collected and maintained “haphazardly”; no countywide performance targets and reports; more resources needed for data collection.
Positives: IT a high priority to county executive; strategic plan used as tool; most systems well integrated; expanding fiber-optic network fourfold; procurement of hardware and software happens quickly; training plans for IT staff; good standards compliance; extensive use of master and shared contracts for purchasing; increasing scope of disaster-recovery ability.
Negatives: Some departments need to improve technology planning; formal analysis not conducted after installation of new systems; fragmented GIS; weak Web site.
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former county executive once described Anne Arundel as “Maryland in miniature, without the mountains.” That isn’t too far off. The county is compact but diverse, including within its borders the state’s capital and its largest airport, 400 miles of tidal shoreline, and long strips of farmland and other sparsely populated territory. The demographics are just as diverse: military personnel from Fort Meade, a suburban working class, retirees and leisure-loving millionaires all contribute to the population of just under 500,000. The complex mixture places Anne Arundel among the highest jurisdictions in the state in affluence and average age of its residents.