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From Governing’s
Grading the Counties introductionFebruary 2002 issue
THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT
Report Card:
Big as the county is, however, growth has depleted its stock of open space in the past two decades, and the question of how to protect what remains is the county’s primary political issue. County Executive Dutch Ruppersberger has been dedicated to land conservation since his election to the post in 1994, and in recent years, the county has spent $28 million to preserve open space. The goal is to keep 90 percent of the population on just one-third of the land. The county’s extensive master-planning process supports this effort and has permitted county-supported construction in only two areas.
Dollars have been scarce, however, both for land programs and for most of the county’s other priorities. Baltimore County government was hit hard by the recession of the early 1990s, with numerous employee layoffs, and the years after were devoted to digging out.
The county has been creative in finding ways to maintain a high-quality workforce in straitened times. A gainsharing program, for example, allows employees who develop cost-saving alternatives to split the savings 50-50 with the county, up to $5,000 per year per employee. Several years into the program, about a third of the county departments use gainsharing. Officials in these departments say it has improved communication between managers and employees, and promoted a sense of teamwork.
There’s relatively good teamwork these days in the county’s political processes as well. Ruppersberger and the council aren’t always in accord, but they’ve forged a cooperative relationship, using workshop sessions before council meetings to work out areas of disagreement. Council chairman S.G. Samuel Moxley puts it plainly: “People don’t want us to fight.” County officials have also worked well with the region’s representatives in the state legislature, and in the past few years this has brought Baltimore County millions more in state funding. In addition, the county’s relationship with the state-appointed Board of Education has improved. “They are accountable to us, but we know they don’t have to be,” Moxley says.
Positives: Generally strong financial management across the board; spending-affordability committee; five-year budget projections; strict policy of using surpluses for one-time expenditures; financial information effectively communicated to citizens; departments sometimes allowed to retain savings; good attention to future impact of legislation; fully funded pension plan; newly revised procurement manual, with added purchasing flexibility; rainy day fund minimum now up to 5 percent of general fund budget.
Negatives: No formal oversight boards for investment and debt management; purchasing system implemented in 1999 didn’t meet expectations, planning for new system under way.
Positives: 10-year master-planning process; citizen planning board makes recommendations for capital improvement plan; good use of “pay as you go” funding; large dent made in school maintenance backlog of 1990s, although more than $200 million remains; contractors on county projects bid on minimum specifications and additional options to enable better cost estimates; county spent nearly $25 million since 1996 to reconstruct alleys; roadway maintenance fully funded; automated inventory-management system in use.
Negatives: Condition data lacking for some assets.
Positives: Number of classifications reduced by 150 since 1996; alternative-pay schedules for hard-to-retain employees; bonus and merit pay available; increased hiring of non-classified employees who may later qualify for classified status; skill-based compensation for Highway Bureau; expanded training opportunities; efficient termination process; health care review committee negotiates health benefits for all unions.
Negatives: No central workforce planning; inconsistent performance-appraisal tools, although county helping agencies develop appropriate evaluations; job and time flexibility rarely used.
Positives: Gainsharing program; department master plans adopted as part of countywide 10-year master plan; output measures requested as part of budget process; performance targets announced and monitored; GIS used to track crime statistics; increasing availability of baseline data; cross-agency implementation of performance plans and oversight for Child and Family Services in early stages; working toward more performance audits.
Negatives: Planning and measurement efforts decentralized; no countywide strategic plan, although departments write their own; quality of data varies from department to department.
Positives: Good analysis of projects before and after implementation; procurement standards work well; integration emphasized; most systems procured and built quickly and efficiently; extensive voice-integration system; Information Technology Advisory Committee includes representatives from county departments and conducts IT planning.
Negatives: Proliferation of databases that can’t be used among different departments; delay in police patrol computers due to vendor that went out of business.
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any people confuse Baltimore County with the city of the same name, but other than a rough equivalence in their populations, it’s hard to imagine two more different entities. The city concentrates almost 700,000 people, most of them black, many of them poor, in a space of 81 square miles. The 750,000 residents of the county are largely white, generally affluent and spread over nearly 600 square miles.