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From Governing’s
Grading the Counties introductionFebruary 2002 issue
THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT
Report Card:
Beyond that, Cuyahoga has always been in the shadow of Cleveland, even though the city now accounts for barely a third of the county’s population. The dominance of Cleveland politics over county government was underscored last year when two of the three county commissioners found themselves opposing each other in the primary for mayor. One of them, commissioner Jane Campbell, won the election and was sworn in as mayor in January.
Last summer, Cuyahoga also lost its county administrator. His description of the high-pressure, low-profile county world he left: “It’s a sleepy little government that makes 5,000 decisions a year and spends a billion,” says Tom Hayes. “It’s a government that doesn’t get credit for what it does.”
The county has been plagued with a host of frustrations stemming from Ohio law, including a mandated structural organization that makes management of human resources and technology difficult and inhibits the ability to manage for results in some agencies.
County leaders and managers do deserve credit for getting Cuyahoga’s finances in order. In 1994, the county suffered a major investment disaster, which temporarily yanked $114 million out of its portfolio. Since then, it has kept spending in line, built up reserves and seen its bond rating go up to respectable levels. Now its financial acumen is being tested again. With steep state cutbacks and a weakening economy, the county is trying to shed expensive employees through an early retirement program. Beyond these anticipated cuts in personnel costs, the county required agencies to make 10 percent budget cuts in October for the 2002 budget.
Even as it has fixed many of its financial shortcomings, Cuyahoga County has instituted some very innovative programs. Its early-childhood initiative tries to head off long-term juvenile problems by guaranteeing that a county worker visits every newborn in the county. This project has been funded by a public-private partnership, and evaluations have demonstrated strong results. The county also has made intensive efforts to keep older residents in their own homes instead of nursing homes.
Positives: Strong and stable financial management leadership; accurate revenue and expenditure estimates, particularly given reliance on volatile sales tax; ample reserves; careful monitoring of investments, with portfolio valued daily; investment reporting and oversight requirements taken seriously following investment disaster of mid-1990s; manageable debt levels and clear debt policies.
Negatives: No integrated financial management information system; little attention to cost accounting; minimal internal auditing; purchasing still paper-intensive; more performance criteria needed in contracts.
Positives: Individual five-year capital improvement plans in place for different infrastructure needs, although no unified plan; increasing focus on preventive maintenance for facilities; annual roof inspections; aggressive bridge-inspection program; project management good on road/bridge side.
Negatives: Update to five-year facilities plan on hold; no formal estimates of operating and maintenance costs of capital projects; facility staff shortages and slow contracting process cause delays; scope of projects routinely changes after project approval; limited project-management technology; aside from roofs, building-condition assessments sporadic; no automated facility-management system.
Positives: Performance pay for non-bargaining employees working well; some early performance-pay efforts with union employees; broadbanded classification system for agencies that report to board of commissioners; fairly flexible hiring; good labor management partnerships, especially in Children and Family Services; integrated HR management information system.
Negatives: Slow hiring; lengthy termination process; poor use of probationary period; disparate compensation systems cause bidding wars for staff; limited recognition programs; departments inconsistent in disciplinary rules; diffuse organizational structure inhibits collection of countywide data; no central workforce planning.
Positives: Performance measures written into contracts with service providers; good coordination internally and with private sector in social services; attention to customer satisfaction in social services; annual priority-setting process; output measures plentiful; program evaluation through contracts with universities, consultants and state auditor; budget used as strategic-planning document.
Negatives: Internal management analysis has declined; no uniformity in reporting format for performance measures; connections between performance measures and overall goals need strengthening; short on outcome measures.
Positives: New human resources information system in place; Automated Data Processing Board taking approval role more seriously; new social service system allows sharing of client data among some agencies; centralized procurement.
Negatives: No chief information officer; no current strategic plan for IT; limited IT planning by departments; wide variety of disparate systems; lack of procurement standards; staff training suffering from budget cuts; staffing issues prevent county from taking advantage of new HR management information system; slow to develop GIS; limited disaster-recovery plans; new budget information system not yet functional.
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uyahoga is a highly urban county, with virtually no undeveloped land and very little unincorporated territory. The county has sole responsibility for only 40 miles of roads. The bulk of its money goes to judicial and social services.