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From Governing’s
Grading the Counties introductionFebruary 2002 issue
THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT
Report Card:
Although sheer size doesn’t necessarily spread honesty too thin, over the years the county’s top officials have been seized by irresistible temptations to steal from the cookie jar. In the late 1990s, the former treasurer, the former investment officer and two former chief administrators pleaded guilty to felony charges that included bribery. The county is still involved in lawsuits attempting to recover the misspent dollars. Meanwhile, a current member of the board of supervisors has been indicted on federal bribery charges and is awaiting trial.
The county leadership is busy trying to learn from the mistakes of the past, putting multiple reforms in place. The new county ethics code is stringent and well publicized; purchasing rules that had not been revised in 20 years have gone through a complete and thorough rewrite, and ethical training is more serious than in many other counties. Last year, in fact, San Bernardino was awarded the Achievement of Excellence in Procurement Award, given out by the National Purchasing Institute.
Still, no jurisdiction can recover overnight from malfeasance of this magnitude, and the attention paid to all the scandals hasn’t made it easy for San Bernardino’s leaders to focus on business as usual. When they do focus on it, they are finding a considerable amount to worry about. With so much of the land in non-urban areas, air pollution, water quality and species-protection laws are a constant preoccupation. Several years ago, plans for a new county hospital had to be revised, and the building’s proposed site moved at a cost of $3 million, because of an endangered sand fly.
The county workforce has a serious turnover problem. Human resources officials estimate that two-thirds of the director positions have changed hands over the past two years. The situation may have stabilized, but the damage has been done. In one five-year period, San Bernardino had seven different individuals filling the top IT position. The current one, who took the job in 2000, has focused on fixing the problems that result from a decentralized administrative structure and from inept leadership that caused departments to make expensive purchases of incompatible equipment.
Positives: Procurement reforms in place, including centralized contracting, stringent approval process; contingency fund and reserves adequate; one-time revenues earmarked for one-time expenditures; improved investment practices, with better controls; wider maturity spread; expanded reporting of investments; new debt advisory board.
Negatives: County has debt of $2.7 billion, includes bonding out of unfunded pension obligation; several enterprise funds in deficit, including medical center; FY2000 revenues nearly 4 percent under budget projections; minimal long-term planning; old financial information system has limited analytic capability.
Positives: Stepped-up maintenance funding to deal with deferred needs; good project tracking, with recent facilities work delivered on time and on budget, although projects sometimes slowed down by environmental issues; pavement-management systems in use.
Negatives: Transportation funding runs substantially short of needs; only 46 percent of roads in good condition, with 17.3 percent in poor condition; maintenance approach generally reactive rather than proactive; facility condition assessments currently maintained only on paper; decentralized asset management creates information gaps; no long-term plan for facilities, although county plans on issuing RFP for 10-year master plan to deal with office-space needs in city of San Bernardino.
Positives: Newly rebuilt HR team trying to reestablish employee trust; salary surveys in progress; rebuilding classification section; early efforts at central workforce planning include analysis of coming retirements and training programs to fill leadership needs; intern program with local universities and technical schools; much-needed revision of personnel rules.
Negatives: Heavy turnover leads to problems of inexperience in applying HR rules and following consistent practices; performance appraisals vary in timeliness and usefulness; classification system neglected in 1990s, causing backlog of 300 reclassification requests; salaries lag market; hiring can be slow; accelerating number of lawsuits filed by unions against county.
Positives: Workshops held last year aimed at providing input for developing priorities and agenda; pilot project for coordinated human services delivery being launched in one of county’s desert communities.
Negatives: No countywide strategic plan; previous planning effort tarred by contracting scandal; little attention to performance audits or management analysis; scanty performance measurement, although county taking first steps.
Positives: High-level CIO reports to chief administrative officer; emphasis on training of technology workers; new human resources management information system in place, although all capabilities not fully exploited yet; new strategic IT plan; customer-satisfaction survey helping to track needs and progress.
Negatives: Internal processes still paper-dependent; duplicative technology has caused major inefficiencies and created unwieldy maintenance needs; little central direction or common IT infrastructure, although county now moving toward more centralized model; revolving door in CIO office, although seemingly stabilized in past two years; weak training of end-users; Web site and GIS need lots of work; little evaluation of implemented systems.
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merica’s biggest county, taking in three deserts and 37 mountain ranges, and stretching from the outskirts of Los Angeles all the way to the Nevada border, San Bernardino is so physically unwieldy that it’s hard to imagine anybody at one end knowing much about what’s happening on the other side.