|
|
From Governing’s
Grading the Counties introductionFebruary 2002 issue
THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT
Report Card:
The county government has been willing, however, to veer outside of its mandated functions when it sees a promising opportunity. Hennepin doesn’t have a specific mandate to deal with education, for example, but County Administrator Sandra Vargas argues that “if we don’t keep those kids in school, we’ll lose the battle on welfare and the criminal justice system.” So the county has set a performance goal of keeping truancy rates under 5 percent.
Meanwhile, in the social service arena, the county is moving toward greater integration of programs. Traditionally, mental health, substance abuse and family assistance have been funded by separate streams of federal and state dollars, and haven’t coordinated well with each other. Until recently, Vargas says, social service in Hennepin “was a holding company — each department had its own set of businesses, clients and customers.” A study two years ago showed that some low-income families had as many as a dozen caseworkers. The study also revealed that 200 of the neediest families cost the county some $29 million a year, partly because of service duplication.
Since then, Hennepin has launched an effort to break down program barriers and focus on social-policy results. One of the most promising efforts at achieving coordinated services is taking place in the Powderhorn neighborhood in South Minneapolis. In this pilot project, workers from economic-assistance programs, probation, social services, veterans services, children and family services and adult services combine forces and work as a unit, with common goals for client families. Throughout the county, social workers in children and family services are no longer divvied up into specialty functions, passing clients from one to another as they move through the system. Now, as much as possible, each case has one supervising caseworker in charge of managing the entire menu of services.
This has helped to reduce the amount of time children spend in temporary situations — foster care, for example. And a side effect of the new approach is that social workers don’t burn out as quickly: Eight years ago, the job vacancy rate for child-protective workers at any given time was 20 percent. Last year, it was 3 percent.
Positives: Superb debt management, featuring innovative partnership with city of Minneapolis and school district to look globally at local debt issuance; very good planning, including long-term view of future liabilities; innovative investment practices; good cost data on services; thorough auditing; new financial management training program being introduced, efforts under way to provide greater consistency in largely decentralized contract management.
Negatives: Contracting processes too lengthy; too many procurement systems still paper-based; no purchasing card in place; general fund revenue estimates tend to excessive conservatism.
Positives: Excellent condition assessments; costs calculated on bringing assets to good condition; model preventive-maintenance efforts; maintenance well funded, particularly for facilities; full, informative inventories; good capital planning, with citizens budget task force and careful prioritization; tight linkage with overall strategic planning.
Negatives: Planning and project delays in transportation caused by need for municipal approval of county projects; project-management software should be better; state gas tax not keeping pace with needs for major road improvement.
Positives: Innovative employee-recruitment efforts, including international recruitment of nurses; bonus offered to employees for referral of new hires; applications can be submitted online; employees can register for online training; committee on training helps share resources; low turnover rates; workforce planning includes a promising new mentoring program.
Negatives: Aside from IT officials and senior managers, little opportunity to reward outstanding employees either through performance pay or non-cash reward mechanisms, although efforts under way; high percentage of employees capped at top range of pay; executive salaries capped by Minnesota law at 95 percent of the governor’s salary; some tension in union relations relating to grievance system; lengthy discipline process.
Positives: Excellent management analysis tied to policy and budgeting changes; good outcome measures in some parts of government, particularly human services; strategic-planning framework developed in 2000; new unified performance budget for human services is a work in progress.
Negatives: Performance measurement varies, with some departments leagues ahead of others, although county trying to achieve greater consistency; results information difficult for citizens to find.
Positives: High-level chief information officer; solid procurement standardization; good training for technology workers; low staff turnover; excellent IT asset management, with detailed cost analysis allowing county to appropriately charge departments for services; steady and consistent technology replacement; very early developer and user of geographic information systems, with good sharing of data; worthwhile use of imaging in social services; excellent Web site.
Negatives: IT governance board, made up of department directors, criticized for lack of courage to make hard decisions; end-user training “mediocre”; use of Web transactions somewhat limited by state of Minnesota.
|
 |
ennepin’s simple governmental structure makes it somewhat easier to run than most large urban counties. Other than the seven commissioners, only the sheriff and prosecutor are elected. Two-thirds of the budget goes to social services. There’s very little unincorporated area, and the county’s 45 cities share the responsibility for maintaining local infrastructure.