I recently reported $113 million in County tax money that went to pay Browns Stadium, Art & Culture recipients, and the medical mart/convention center; a while back I accounted more than $100 million to the convention bureau over some 17 years; also $240 million of sin taxes went to pay for Gateway; in January,the County will pay from its general fund some $6 to $8 million in an annual bond payment for Gateway overruns, which total more than $100 million. Playhouse Square gets funding from the County on its buildings annually,
the city is paying several million a year for the Gateway garages, which don’t make enough to pay its cost because of free parking for the Indians and Cavs.

City tax revenues from its parking income and admission taxes are diverted for other than city tasks.

Add to this contributions to various civic and arts institutions annually by the County.

Then if you add in tax forgivenance from tax abatements and tax incremental financing for private investors, you add hundreds of millions in lost taxes. The city recently gave $1 million to the Rock and Roll Hall of fame for its induction dinner and festivities.

You are beginning to talk about real money.

So if you are going to ask about responsible government spending, you can’t overlook these payments by every level of government, city, county and then state.

However, it seems no one wants to take a close look at these vast expenditures of public money.

One limitation of that research was that the most recent data dated back to 2002. Because the state of Ohio doesn’t require local governments to report revenue and expense data in a consistent manner that can be aggregated, researchers relied on the Census of Governments data issued every five years — but increasingly governments aren’t reporting their numbers to the Census, so even that data is incomplete.

The first step to addressing this problem would be to have the state of Ohio implement a consistent government reporting process so citizens can see what they spend on different services and compare it with other communities. And perhaps foundations and others will continue to compare our local spending data with that of other regions across the country (since we know Ohio isn’t on the cutting edge…)

A new state commission on local government reform that is just getting started on its work could help by making better reporting one of its first recommendations. It’s hard to answer the questions raised by Ed, Bill and others without better data. But it is save to say the public wants to see more steps taken to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of local government. We all need to find ways to help the public get what it wants. I hope you will be hearing some new ideas from the Fund in the near future.

To John’s point about customer service, I have renewed my driver’s license in California and Ohio. In California, you go to a Web site and schedule an appointment. You show up at the appointed time and stand in the line for people with appointments. You are called immediately to the counter for payment, testing, and eye tests. People with various needs are sent to separate lines or windows that focus on those needs. The process takes 20 minutes. People without appointments stand in another line, wait, and watch people with appointments get served. Even there, though, people get their licenses renewed in 30-40 minutes. Electronic signs on the wall post the wait for each line. Data are gathered and employees are measured by how efficiently they process people through.

In Ohio, you show up at a license office and stand on a line the length of which cannot be predicted in advance because people just show up when they want to. There is no scheduling of appointments or management of work flow. One day the lines may be short, and another long. The office is staffed the same each day, though, so that sometimes employees are overwhelmed, and other times they are idle. Even staffing is for the convenience of the employees, so that they can predict their work days. They generally are pleasant enough when they can be bothered to make eye contact, end their personal conversations, and provide service, but their general behavior and demeanor suggests that they know they are not their primarily to serve customers, but to possess jobs. There is no apparent productivity measurement, signage is unclear, and there is one big line. I usually budget a half-day to get a license in Ohio.

Yes, it is clearly so that Tri-C and Metro Health are not separately accounted (as I made clear in my Metro Health comment above).

But we need to start somewhere, and public employment data is a pretty good start. You can make adjustments in the next stage of analysis for Tri-C and MetroHealth, if you like.

I’m not looking for accounting accuracy; I’m looking for recognition that Cuyahoga County has a big problem: public overheads are relatively high, and headcounts are the main cost of government. This county is beginning to sink. This cost structure drives higher local taxes, which are relatively higher than Chicago.

To understand the depth of the problem, these headcount numbers give us a good place to start looking for productivity improvements.

Why, for example, are legal and judicial employment numbers so high in the county? I have no idea. But it seems to me that it make sense for some organization (like a foundation) to undertake some research to explain why.

Why do we have a relative imbalance in primary and secondary education? (Fewer teachers, more administrators.)

Are there things we could do to make fire protection more efficient in the county? (Before he took the job in Columbus, Eric Fingerhut was working on some really good ideas in this area at Baldwin Wallace.)

Why is water and sewer employment relatively high? A number of people from former Cleveland administrations now work there. Are they simply protecting their pensions? And what about regional transit? Same story? Is there featherbedding going on? The headcount numbers give us a prima facie case.

Housing and development includes more than the CDCs, and although my experience with these organizations is limited, I suspect that many of them are run without serious performance metrics. Doesn’t it make sense for the county to re-eaximine how development is taking place in this county?

Let’s look, for a moment, at workforce development. After a number of years, we still actually have two workforce staffs, one controlled by the mayor, one controlled by the county commission. While it is true that no local funds are expended here, the workforce system in the county (which controls $15 million to $20 million in federal money) is, in my view, remarkably inefficient.

Federal money goes to support training providers who are often politically connected. Fanny Lewis and I had a number of discussions about the waste int his system, and she understood how hard it would be to change the political dynamic. And then, of course, there is the public housing agency.

(As for CDC’s I’m not sure why we need 50 to 60 CDC’s in the county, but that is a relatively small part of the problem. With 35 in Cleveland, my guess is that we have a CDC for just about every neighborhood — and city council district. This appears to me to be more of a political than a market driven approach to economic development. The solution: begin by benchmarking how other cities do their development. What does their development infrastructure look like?)

But, look, don’t worry so much about the community development turf. (It will be very resistant to change.)

Look at the bigger issue of the county. We are paying too much for the government we are getting. So the issue, to me is not where do I start, but where do you?

Critiquing people’s work (which you are very good at doing, by the way) does not lead to solutions, unless you suggest alternatives.

In my view, we need a far leaner, more entrepreneurial approach to government. My question to you: How do we get there?

As for absorbing laid off public employees, I have no real concerns here. I’m not suggesting that we terminate jobs recklessly. That won’t happen. I am suggesting that over time we drive down headcount numbers and focus on delivering clearer outcomes more effectively.

I am suggesting that the foundations and the business community start focusing on the cost structure of government in Cuyahoga County. It’s unsustainable and getting worse.

You could help by leading a discussion about how we could do become a national leader in innovative community development.

What models of infrastructure sharing can we follow to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness?

What pooled approaches are available to raise capital, both debt and equity, from a broader array of funders?

What are the most promising collaborative models and strategies to promote sustainability and scale in an industry comprised primarily of small, local, independent organizations?

I have some ideas, but I’d like to hear yours.

Back in July, when Chris Thompson posted here at BFD about that FFOEF consultants’ study (by the Center for Governmental Research), I commented about some serious methodological issues with its “comparisons” among counties: e.g. the inclusion of the entire Metrohealth and Tri-C budgets even though these are relatively unique institutions and county taxpayers cover a minority of their costs; the inclusion of the City’s airport and electric system, which are also fairly unique and entirely self-supporting; and so on. Chris promised to pass these observations on to the consultants. Maybe he did, but I haven’t heard anything since and there are no corrections posted on the study website.

Are you sure those per capita employment numbers don’t have the same problem?

Also, isn’t it about time to start specifying exactly where you’d like to see those jobs and budgets reduced? “Inefficiency” and “corruption” are nice vague targets, but after a couple of years of this it would be nice to know where you think the layoffs should take place to make things more efficient and clean. Want to close some more fire stations (presumably in the suburbs)? Fire some more teachers? Where’s the bloat in the courts, and how would you get rid of it?

More to the point, assuming we really do have lots of unneeded $50,000 employees on public payrolls, I’d like to hear how you think the regional economy would go about absorbing a few thousand of them. Seriously. Is this just lower taxes = business growth = jobs? What jobs? How? When?

Finally, a word about “inefficiencies in housing and community development cost[ing] us $50 million a year.” Ed, what could this possibly mean and how would you calculate it?

Please don’t tell me about “CDCs in every neighborhood”. At most there are 50 or 60 publicly supported community development corporations in the county (Cleveland has about 35). If they get an average of $200,000 a year in public support — which I think is pretty far to the high side — that’s a grand total of $12 million or less.

The City of Cleveland spends about $68 million a year on all CD and housing activities, including code enforcement. The county’s Development Department budget is $25 million. Add in five other CDBG entitlement communities and you still have to stretch to get to $100 million in CD/housing spending — the majority of which is spent on projects and grant programs, not staff. So where the heck do you get $50 million in “inefficiencies”?

Also please note that this is almost all Federal money, that it can’t be used for anything else but a defined range of CD and housing uses in low-moderate income areas, and therefore it has just about nothing to do with local “tax bloat”.