In January of 2000, Governing's cover story highlighted the miraculous relationship that Mayor Jerry Brown and City Manager Robert Bobb had forged in an attempt to revitalize Oakland ["Mayor Brown & Mr. Bobb"].

There's an $80 billion gap in what we spend and what we need to spend to maintain our infrastructure as is.

Performance measurement in government "is not a fad, but it is not yet a movement, either," Robert P. O'Neill Jr., executive director of the International City/County Management Association, told Governing's 2003 Managing Performance Conference in October. Public officials, O'Neill pointed out, have been talking about performance measurement for more than 70 years.