Think Regional/Act Local

June 18, 2013 – For over five years, the Local Government Effectiveness and Collaboration Team has worked closely with SEMCOG’s member local governments to implement shared service arrangement that have both reduced cost and, in many cases, also enhanced services. Based on that experience, the following fundamentals have been developed:

• Collaboration process steps
  • Concept envisioned for shared/collaborative services
  • Task force created
  • Proposal developed
  • Stakeholder involvement
  • Financial/legal analysis
  • Go/no go decision
  • Implementation
• Business case must make sense
  • Cost savings and ideally service improvement
  • Avoid automatic cost escalators
  • Start-up costs and payback period quantified
  • Equitable cost sharing formula – varied views likely
  • Value of contributed equipment
  • Personnel factors/legacy costs, i.e., pensions, debt
• Know what are you trying to accomplish, with whom
• What existing relationships are in place
• Research SEMCOG AgileGov database for similar case studies
• Neutral facilitator preferred (from SEMCOG), but not to schedule meetings
• Not always a panacea for balancing near term budgets
• Important tool in the toolbox
• Should save 20-40% with future cost increases minimized
• Can also improve services
• Meet or beat the benchmarks or it’s not worth the effort
• Process can be labor intensive
• Use Collaboration Checklist 
• “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”
• If significant progress is not evident in 3 months, collaboration is likely doomed!

Contact Dave Boerger at boerger@semcog.org if you need help formulating a potential collaboration arrangement with a neighboring community.

Learn how to navigate fiscal uncertainty by improving efficiency, fostering collaboration, and providing information on right-sizing. Through weekly posts, Dave will discuss legislative developments, best practices, and training opportunities.

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June 11, 2013 – Look who’s presenting at this complimentary online Webinar being sponsored by Governing magazine – Deputy Oakland County Executive and SEMCOG advocate Phil Bertolini.

High-Performance Government – Building "Better, Faster, Cheaper"

Date: Thursday, June 20, 2013
Time: 11 a.m. PDT | 2 p.m. EDT

Nationally, six straight years of revenue declines have put enormous pressure on state and local governments. Many local governments have followed a deliberate strategy of institutionalizing innovation and making the smart investments and policy decisions that allow them to improve productivity.

Join Governing magazine for this live Webinar and learn how to:

• Improve cost control
• Increase operational efficiency
• Create and measure high-performance government

Speakers include: Phil Bertolini, CIO/Deputy County Executive Oakland County, Michigan;
Ann S. Bishop, Executive Director, Employees Retirement System, Texas; Katy Simon, Manager, Washoe County, Nevada; Rosa Waymon, Director, Office of Human Resource Management, Georgia Department of Human Services; Eileen Smith, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Education & Government Workday

Register now.

For questions, more information or help applying what you learn, contact Dave Boerger.

Learn how to navigate fiscal uncertainty by improving efficiency, fostering collaboration, and providing information on right-sizing. Through weekly posts, Dave will discuss legislative developments, best practices, and training opportunities.

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June 10, 2013 – As you are aware, the Michigan Legislature is finishing up the FY 2014 budget deliberations. The good news is that they have some additional dollars in the general fund. Why? Well, as the economic climate of the state slowly improves, additional dollars find their way into state coffers. Some of these additional dollars – upwards of $100 million – will be used to improve our transportation infrastructure. This is also good news – mostly! Why do I say that?

Well, our infrastructure sure can use any amount of additional investment and $100 million is a lot of money – but it falls way short of the $1.5 billion we need to be able to fix everything. It is only a one-time increase and isn’t even a good down payment on the rest of the dollars. But hey, we can use it as long as the elected leaders know there is still a long way to go!

The biggest concern is that the legislators indicate they are going to earmark these dollars to do specific projects. Who is going to do this and how are they going to do it? You can argue that it would be hard to find a bad project to fund and that every community needs some additional investment. But, with so many needs and so little money, wouldn’t it make more sense to try to fund a priority need instead of spreading these dollars around to several smaller projects around the state? We have made major strides towards using an asset management approach towards managing our system…and now the legislature is going to earmark projects? Sounds like we are taking a step backward. How are other legislators going to react if their communities are not selected for funding? Will this help or hurt the efforts to find the additional $1.5 billion needed?

Anyway, keep a lookout on this situation. One thing is becoming increasingly clear – the additional dollars we need to improve our road and transit systems are not coming anytime soon, so we will have to find a way to address the most critical needs of our region and state at the expense of other good and needed projects. 

Next year is another election year and an additional tax will surely be off the table. The window for possible action is rapidly closing. Take the summer to meet with your legislator and remind him or her of the need. Every day we wait, it costs a little more and gets a little harder to do.

If you want to know what about anything related to transportation in Southeast Michigan, don’t miss Carmine Palombo's blog. Carmine has more than 30 years of experience in various phases of transportation planning at SEMCOG. He is responsible for administering SEMCOG’s transportation planning program, which includes the region’s long-range transportation plan and short-term transportation plan.

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The Court of King George III London, England

July 10, 1776

Mr. Thomas Jefferson
C/o The Continental Congress
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

 

 

Dear Mr. Jefferson:

 

We have read your "Declaration of Independence" with great interest. Certainly, it represents a considerable undertaking, and many of your statements do merit serious consideration. Unfortunately, the Declaration as a whole fails to meet recently adopted specifications for proposals to the Crown, so we must return the document to you for further refinement. The questions that follow might assist you in your process of revision:

1. In your opening paragraph you use the phrase "the Laws of Nature and Nature`s God." What are these laws? In what way are they the criteria on which you base your central arguments? Please document with citations from the recent literature.
2. In the same paragraph you refer to the "opinions of mankind." Whose polling data are you using? Without specific evidence, it seems to us the "opinions of mankind" are a matter of opinion.
3. You hold certain truths to be "self-evident." Could you please elaborate? If they are as evident as you claim then it should not be difficult for you to locate the appropriate supporting statistics.
4. "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" seem to be the goals of your proposal. These are not measurable goals. If you were to say that "among these is the ability to sustain an average life expectancy in six of the 13 colonies of at last 55 years, and to enable newspapers in the colonies to print news without outside interference, and to raise the average income of the colonists by 10 percent in the next 10 years," these could be measurable goals. Please clarify.
5. You state, "Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government...." Have you weighed this assertion against all the alternatives? What are the trade-off considerations?
6. Your description of the existing situation is quite extensive. Such a long list of grievances should precede the statement of goals, not follow it. Your problem statement needs improvement.
7. Your strategy for achieving your goal is not developed at all. You state that the colonies "ought to be Free and Independent States," and that they are "Absolved from All Allegiance to the British Crown." Who or what must change to achieve this objective? In what way must they change? What specific steps will you take to overcome the likely resistance? How long will it take? We have found that a little foresight in these areas helps to prevent careless errors later on. How cost-effective are your strategies?
8. Who among the list of signatories will be responsible for implementing your strategy? Who conceived it? Who provided the theoretical research? Who will constitute the advisory committee? Please submit an organization chart and vitas of the principal investigators. 
9. You must include an evaluation design. We have been requiring this since Queen Anne`s War. 
10. What impact will your proposed solution have? Your failure to include any assessment of this inspires little confidence in the long-range prospects of your undertaking. 
11. Please submit a PERT diagram, an activity chart, itemized budget, and manpower utilization matrix.
12. We hope that these comments prove useful in revising your "Declaration of Independence." We welcome the submission of your revised proposal. Our due date for unsolicited proposals is July 31, 1776. Ten copies with original signatures will be required.

Sincerely,

 

Management Analyst to the British Crown

Learn how to navigate fiscal uncertainty by improving efficiency, fostering collaboration, and providing information on right-sizing. Through weekly posts, Dave will discuss legislative developments, best practices, and training opportunities.

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