Instead of building large schools accommodating hundreds or thousands of students, microschool leaders plant schools in storefronts, libraries, and empty dance studios. These small schools can range in size, serving anywhere from 5 to 100 or more students in multiple grade levels. 

Don Soifer is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer and Ashley Soifer is the Chief Innovation Officer and co-founder of the National Microschooling Center. Their organization provides information about microschools to parents, policymakers, and school leaders, and supports founders to launch their own. In this interview, we ask the Soifers why families are drawn to this alternative education model, what challenges microschool leaders face, how they are funded, and much more.

Jude: What is a microschool and how is it different from other education models?

Ashley: A microschool school is a small, intimate, flexible learning environment. There’s no cap on a microschool and school sizes can range anywhere from eight kids sitting around the living room to over 100 in an office building. But that group of 100 is likely broken up into smaller groups for learning. 

Jude: How are microschools different than a traditional classroom? 

Ashley: As a microschooling parent myself with three children in a microschool, it’s so exciting to have that connection with the educators that are with my children and to really tailor their individual education for each kiddo. If a child is working on a particular math program and the educator decides it’s just not working as well as it could be, they can adapt mid-year and shift to a different program. Some microschools follow state academic content standards while others may focus on social-emotional learning, use a science-based curriculum or utilize project-based learning.

Christian: What are the pitfalls of trying to set a standard definition for microschools?

Don: Since microschooling is so flexible, we’re reluctant to adopt definitions that might be too restrictive down the road. Once you define something, you put a bullseye on its back and that makes it very easy for regulators to find problems with it. At the end of the day, some amount of definition sounds helpful for parents, but let’s make sure that we don’t do it in a way that hamstrings the movement’s effectiveness or its potential to grow.

Jude: Why do families use microschools?

Don: Millions of families across the country have reevaluated their relationships with the institutions that they had historically relied upon to meet their educational needs. This looks very different in different places. In rural communities, we’re seeing a lot of interest in microschooling taking advantage of this golden age of digital content. Others, like Montessori microschools don’t rely on technology. 

At the same time, the hybrid aspects of microschooling haven’t really existed before. Families realized that they don’t need to have one exclusive provider for all of their educational needs. For example, some kids are in a microschool three days a week while the rest of the time is spent with a combination of tutors or classes. In terms of microschooling’s market share and the potential for students’ transformation – the sky’s the limit.

Jude: The public-private microschool you started in 2020 gained almost instant popularity. Why do you think microschools gained so much attention during the pandemic?

Don: When the pandemic began, it became obvious that the fifth largest school district in the country and all of the other educational options were not adequate during the pandemic for North Las Vegas residents. Ashley and I worked up two briefing books, dropped them on the city manager’s desk the next morning and ran microschools for the city of North Las Vegas in their rec centers and library. The city made it free for all of their residents so long as microschools were in person every day with safe procedures in place aligned wih government mandates. Participating residents would withdraw from the school district and follow homeschooling rules.

Three-quarters of our microschool kids were more than two grade levels behind when they arrived. But the microschool we ran for the city of North Las Vegas changed all that. Academic results and parental satisfaction were through the roof because we trusted them as partners in their children’s learning trajectories.

As we got more positive press for what we were doing, we realized we had 25 microschooling leaders coming to our office regularly who were building this exciting, vibrant, dynamic sector that had never existed before. This led us to launch the National Microschooling Center.

Jude: What advice would you give someone who wants to start a microschool? 

Ashley: The first thing is to talk to people in your community, gather interested families, and hear about their children. At the National Microschool Center, we take calls from folks that are interested in starting a microschool and provide support and resources. Don’t be afraid to jump in and microschool! 

Don: Microschoolingcenter.org has a lot of resources from free training and learning tools about how to microschool. Many of our calls and emails are parents looking to join a microschool, but we often shift them into building mode. Researchers tell us that we’re at about a 2% market share nationally, which is about where Catholic schools are in this country. But I believe microschooling could get to a 10% market share. 

Jude: What sort of financial or policy barriers are there for families interested in microschooling? 

Don: Policymakers should avoid making deals that could hamstring the effectiveness of microschools. For instance, overbearing accountability provisions can make it difficult for microschools to operate. Some microschools care more about the social and emotional growth of their learners than they do about their academic growth. Some never want to subject their learners to a norm-referenced assessment, let alone a criterion-referenced assessment. Others reject their state’s academic content standards as not being entirely pertinent to the future of their own learners.

Ashley: One of the biggest barriers that microschool leaders experience is zoning because even though microschooling has been around for quite some time, local regulators don’t always know where to put microschools. They start asking questions like: Do we need to do a traffic study? Are you a school? Do we need to figure out if pickup and drop off is going to cause backups on this major road? What does your parking lot look like? When those really aren’t things that usually matter because microschools are so small. So often the barriers we encounter come from local regulations, such as business licensing.

Jude: How are microschools funded exactly?

Ashely: It varies from state to state. In the city of North Las Vegas, the kiddos withdrew from the public school system and all the parents filed out their notice of intent. So they became homeschoolers but were coming to the microschool five days a week and learning The program was funded by city appropriation, completely outside of traditional education funding streams.  

In other states, some microschools are private schools or are inside traditional public schools. And there are some really innovative things happening in Arizona and Idaho with charter schools. Bottomline, it depends on your state’s frameworks and what tools let you serve the needs of your community best. 

Don: When we did a microschool for the City of North Las Vegas, we did it in rec centers and libraries that the city owns already. While Nevada is not historically a school choice-friendly state, Nevada’s TOTS (Transforming Opportunities for Toddlers and Students) Grants gives $5000 grants to families with special needs kids that can be used broadly for education purposes. Those funds supported microschools. Another example from Nevada is a microschool that operates out of a library in a rural area. The free library building covers a major facility cost, while other library-funded services can be used for microschooling purposes. States with social impact bond programs or pay-for-performance programs that could be accessed for microschooling are another possibility.  

Jude: What are the major costs associated with operating a microschool?

Ashley: Facilities are one of the major costs. If it’s a partnership microschool and there’s an employer providing the facility or house of worship providing the facility, that cuts down a ton on cost. Independent microschool leaders should connect with underutilized buildings. For instance, dance studios that are only open in the evenings could be happy to rent their space out at a much cheaper cost during the day.

Being creative with facilities is crucial because that cuts down some of those big-ticket items. Staffing is another big ticket item. Sometimes we purchase bulk licenses for different learning tools that will also provide free training so that microschool leaders can use them. That way, we can help them keep their bottom line low.

Jude: To what extent can microschools be scaled by operators? 

Ashley: Provider networks like Prenda play a crucial role in the microschool movement making resources for microschool leaders. The independent microschool leaders really don’t want to scale. They want to create a small intimate learning environment that families love, and they often aren’t looking to add multiple campuses or to grow their existing campus. We see the answer to scale as growing more microschool leaders. By creating more leaders you can have more microschool options popping up all over the country.

Jude: Are there any states where the microschool movement has grown significantly in the last few years? 

Don: In Southern Nevada, we have about 24 microschools. Other emerging hotspots include the Atlanta area, Southern Florida, Wichita, to some extent parts of New Jersey. It’s just a matter of time until Indiana, West Virginia, and Arizona with their school-choice vehicles join the microschooling community with a big-time presence.

Jude: How is microschooling different from homeschooling? 

Ashley: Oftentimes, it depends on your state. Some are taught by parents or other family members who say, “Hey, we need a better solution for our kiddos.” Others come from a variety of career fields. In the microschool venture with the city of North Las Vegas, our star middle school math teacher ran pyrotechnics at one of the shows on the Strip here in Las Vegas. What middle school kid doesn’t want to hear how he uses math every day to blow things up? 

Others are veteran teachers. One of our best microschool leaders in Nevada taught in an independent school and got tired of shutting her door to teach the way that she wanted. So she opened a microschool so that she can now teach the way that’s best for kids.

Jude: What advice do you have for policymakers interested in supporting microschools in their cities and states? 

Don: They should call us! What’s exciting to me is that this is truly a permissionless education and systems don’t always know what to make of microschools. We can help people navigate the existing frameworks and especially those in their state, municipal, or locality. It’s time to upgrade and update the frameworks in which microschools operate.

Jude: What final thoughts do you have for readers?

Don: This is about empowering families to build and not join, and to be active partners in learning in ways that fundamentally change the relationship people have historically had with education. Microschooling represents a new frontier with some great forward-thinking people, it has diversified in ways that we maybe haven’t seen in school choice experiments during the past 15 years. We have as many microschooling leaders who are as hard left as hard right, and it brings together a community that in some way raises the ceiling on what happens when school choice becomes a possibility and families project into it their own values and what they want for their own kids. 

The post National Microschooling Center founders illustrate how microschools are changing K-12 education appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Small oversaw the implementation of an innovative public safety program that combined police, fire, and emergency medical services under the new Palmyra Department of Public Safety, with Small becoming Palmyra’s first public safety director. In the time Small has served in this role, the village’s property crime rate has plummeted by 88% to just over five property crimes per 1,000 residents. The village managed to accomplish this feat while simultaneously reducing its fine revenue by more than two-thirds. 

Reason Foundation’s Vittorio Nastasi and Austil Stuart recently sat down with James Small to discuss his successes in Palmyra which he credits to an outcome-based policing approach.  

Nastasi: Can you describe how Palmyra’s public safety agencies were performing before you were hired? 

Small: Things hadn’t gone well in public safety in general for a long time. For both police and fire, there was a real vacuum in leadership. For example, the previous police chief really struggled in his role, was removed by the board, and had not been replaced for 3 years after he was removed. So, we had a police department, we had cars that said ‘police’ on them, and we hired police officers to go out and do police things. But there was no vision beyond that. 

Without any clear leadership, the mentality was, “Okay, we’re going to go out and enforce some things.” But there wasn’t any purpose behind that enforcement effort, so officers would go out on the highway in the 25 MPH zone writing speeding tickets. But ultimately, that wasn’t doing anything for the community. There was a high property crime rate that was running about twice the state average, you weren’t seeing things getting prosecuted properly, and there was just a variety of breakdowns in the system.  

Nastasi: What was the community’s perception of the police department? 

Small: There was a real breakdown in trust in the community. I would go out to introduce myself to the community, and people would just tell me about their awful experiences with the police department. Some people described retaliation for making a complaint about an officer. I don’t think it had gotten as far as some of the excessive use of force cases you see on the news, but it was an escalation of conflict within the community. I think that is something we’re seeing in law enforcement in general, and it’s really a failure from a customer satisfaction perspective.  

Nastasi: Writing traffic tickets on the highway was bringing in a lot of revenue for Palmyra, though. Did you get any pushback when you started implementing changes? 

Small: The police department was issuing about $90,000 in fines every year, and that would account for about 10% of the village’s budget. Now, did they actually collect $90,000? That’s a different question, but that’s how much they were budgeting for. I think our number last year was about $27,000, so we’re at about 30% of where we started. The revenue issue definitely came up at points with the board. I had a village board member come up to me one time and say, “All these warnings are costing us a lot of money.” 

Nastasi: Was reducing fine revenue the goal, or just a byproduct of your mission? 

Small: The mission of our department isn’t to raise money. It is to go out and reduce victimization in the community, and we’re doing that extremely well. Reducing victimization required us to change our tactics and stop seeking out enforcement to raise revenue. Some revenue may be generated from some of our work, but it should never be the objective.  

I subscribe to what I call an ‘outcome-based strategy.’ I believe our actions should result in our desired outcomes: reducing victimization in the community, improving trust in the police, and creating a sense of community safety. We need to be focusing on facilitating those outcomes. So, we shifted into this problem-solving mindset to move the vision from the police being punishers to the police being facilitators. 

I think there is a place for tickets, but I think we’ve seen such an overreliance on punishment. We’ve forgotten that the real goal is to change behavior. We should be asking ourselves, “What can we do to facilitate changing behavior and remove obstacles from this person’s path?” 

Nastasi: What does that look like in practice? 

Small: Sometimes it involves referring people to the human services system or coordinating with a probation officer––actions you might think of as being beyond the scope of a traditional law enforcement officer. Take somebody, for instance, that had their license suspended because they weren’t paying their fines. What we do in that situation is give that person a 30-day notice from us saying they need to pay their fines. We print out a document from the Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicles saying what they need to do to get their license reinstated, how much they owe, what court they must go to, and the court’s address. If they need to extend that 30-day notice, that’s fine. We’ll do that if they’ve made progress or set up a payment plan that might take a little longer than our initial deadline. It’s not a free pass. There are consequences on the other end if they don’t pay their tickets, but we’re giving them a chance. Most people take that chance when you tell them what they need to do.  

Stuart: Can you describe briefly the decision to consolidate Palmyra’s public safety agencies?  

Small: I was hired as the director of public safety providing administrative supervision over the fire and rescue services. I was also hired as the chief of police, and we were going to have a separate fire chief and an emergency medical service director. It was never the plan for me to be the director of all three.  

We had a very severe personnel issue in the fire department. I want to say there were eight chiefs in the 15 years prior to my arrival. My initial recommendation to the board was to dissolve the entire fire service agency. We went around and thought about partnering with one of the neighboring agencies. None of them were interested, so that wasn’t going to be an option in our case.  

One day one of our board members looked at me and said, “Well, I’ve seen you in a police car, a fire truck, and an ambulance all in the same day. Why can’t we just get more people like you?” My answer was that nobody had done it that way. I mean, this model is out there, but every example of it was created on day one as a consolidated public safety department. Previous efforts to merge two departments on the fly like that hadn’t been successful. By the end of 2017, we had fully implemented the combined public safety model. 

Efficiencies gained by consolidating the two budgets together ended up allowing us to add two additional full-time positions. Some of the freed-up funds also absorbed some of the lost revenue from traffic citations. We also trimmed down our vehicle fleet.  

Stuart: How did consolidating the departments help you implement your vision? 

Small: All our police officers have fire and EMS training, so the staff can fill multiple roles on one call. For example, they may need to take law enforcement action during an EMS call. We were concerned that the public wouldn’t want someone with a jacket that has ‘police’ written on the back in their house for some EMS calls where there might be drugs or something involved. That fear hasn’t materialized. I think that has a lot to do with how our police officers interact with people.  

When we’re on an overdose scene, for example, we’re primarily concerned with resolving the medical issue and getting the person whatever treatment they need. Some cases might involve criminal elements that need to be investigated, but by the time we get there, everyone has been cooperative, and they trust the system. Usually, when we take someone like that through the criminal process, it’s to get them to a drug court so they can get into treatment. We work with the district attorney’s office to send them to drug court because giving them a $400 ticket in municipal court isn’t going to change their behavior.  

Stuart: Do you think any of Palmyra’s experience could inform other jurisdictions? Palmyra is a relatively small town with a relatively small police force. How scalable do you think your model is? 

Small: The combined public safety model can work well in rural communities where call volumes are low enough to share personnel across the agencies. This isn’t a good model for large cities with high call volumes, but the philosophy behind it is scalable. Getting police out of this mindset of punishing people into submission is important because I think that’s one of the problems we’ve seen in the criminal justice system. There is too much emphasis on punishment and not enough on changing behavior. There are people that need to be held in prison because the public needs to be protected from them. But in most cases, we should be looking to solve problems. That’s not just a philosophy for police and fire services, it’s how we should be operating as a government generally. That’s how we build trust. I haven’t received a complaint about an officer in five years. When I first got in, I was getting several a month.  

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. 

The post Innovators in Action: James Small, public safety director of Palmyra, Wisconsin appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Reason Foundation’s Ari DeWolf and Christian Barnard recently sat down with the bill sponsor, Arizona State Senator Sine Kerr, to discuss the new policy and how she believes removing unnecessary busing regulations will help families and schools across the state.

DeWolf: Before we talk about the substance of your K-12 transportation policy reform from the 2022 session, would you share a little bit about your background before becoming a member of the Arizona State Senate? What got you involved in public policy and in public life?

Senator Kerr: Yes. Thank you so much for that. I always love to talk about my background because I think it is relevant to any American citizen who has even had a fleeting thought of becoming an elected official. My husband and I are longtime dairy farmers in Buckeye, Arizona, which is about 35 miles west of Phoenix.

Through agriculture, I got involved in leadership programs from the Arizona Farm Bureau with United Dairymen. I began taking leadership classes and anything else I could get my hands on. That’s where I learned to love engaging in public policy. I spent a lot of time at the state legislature meeting with members and advocating on behalf of agriculture.

Early on, it was apparent to me. that government regulation could really hurt you – and hurt you quickly. I understood how critical it was to have decision-makers who understood the impact each and every piece of legislation could have on farmers and ranchers, not only in Arizona but across our country. That carried over for me a love for policy and a recognition of how critical it is to have decision-makers who understand their impact on small businesses and other entities and folks trying to do what they do best.

DeWolf: What first made you see the need to reform the way K-12 institutions are incorporating or utilizing 11-to-15-passenger vans to meet students’ transportation needs?

Senator Kerr: This was a result of a first-of-its-kind in-the-nation grant program put into effect in Arizona last year. Through the granting application process, they found a large number of students came from rural schools. Lack of transportation flexibility was a frequently made comment, especially in those areas.

Great Leaders, Strong Schools, asked if I would be interested in the issue. I said, “Absolutely.” I represent a rural area. I raised our family in a rural area and they all attended, what I call, a small, rural farm school. Oftentimes, in rural areas, the roads are not maintained like in our urban areas. There are long distances that many of our bus drivers had to go, either to pick up students or deliver them at the end of the day. It was, in my opinion, a no-brainer and very common sense. We would offer flexibility to districts wanting to take this up. I heard from Reservation school officials about how this could be beneficial. And when, in our urban areas, there is a route that didn’t have a whole lot of students, then they could use this type of vehicle and be way more efficient.

Most importantly, are the safety features added to the program. These vehicles are already being utilized by sports teams and other groups. They have already been utilized to safely transport children for many, many years. This new law just allows these vehicles to be used on regular bus routes.

Barnard: I think every state needs these flexibility measures, especially as school choice proliferates. Students are zigzagging everywhere, trying to attend the school best for them. Yellow school buses are great, but they’re not able to serve every student, in every case. And they can be really expensive for districts trying to pick up only four or five students. So where do you see the benefits of this legislation? How do you see it affecting school choice students in Arizona?

Senator Kerr: There’s a great benefit to school districts of any size. As we all know, there’s currently a shortage of drivers who have CDL licenses. Fuel costs are through the roof. And there are maintenance costs for the standard 80-passenger buses.

For our school choice students, it provides an opportunity for those who wouldn’t have it. Parents could not always secure transportation for their children. This could be organized in those circumstances. I heard from a wonderful woman who oversees a school for autistic students and she expressed how beneficial this will be. Again, providing that flexibility too often lacking in public policy. And helping the drivers, who have to go through all the safety training with only one exception – they don’t have to have a CDL.

Barnard: What kind of pushback did you get to the legislation? What kind of pushback can policymakers in other states expect if they introduce similar legislation?

Senator Kerr: The biggest pushback was around safety concerns. And, again, it’s clearly outlined in the bill. Our Department of Public Safety, which oversees our current training for our bus drivers and bus safety, will oversee this program as well. The same agency dealing with safety and rulemaking on all the important safety decisions will still make decisions for these 11-to-15-passenger vehicles. There is also the Student Transportation Advisory Council overseeing the use of any vehicles. They will work in tandem. They are able to offer opinions and oversight on safety features as well. That was the biggest pushback I got. And really, I argued against that because it simply isn’t the case. It will be a very safe program.

The other pushback was with insurance concerns. If a district doesn’t have an insurance company agreeing to back them, then obviously, they are unable to utilize this program. It’s an opt-in opportunity, it’s not required. Hopefully, most of the districts needing the flexibility are be able to work with their insurance agencies to establish a good plan.

Barnard: What interest have school officials shown so far? You said school districts that were applying for the grant wanted more flexibility. Do you think there’s going to be a lot of take-up by districts in the next year or two?

Senator Kerr: I do. Many rural districts, and even our larger, urban districts, have thanked me for the opportunity to have more tools in their K-12 transportation toolbox. I’m excited to learn how districts utilize this refreshing flexibility.

Barnard: And that makes sense because schools are already using them for things like transporting the tennis team or debate club. There are some federal barriers to purchasing vans for school transportation, but many districts already have these vans and they’re just sitting in the lot. Do you think many districts already have 15-passenger vans?

Senator Kerr: I do. And with the bus driver shortage, some bus routes get canceled. I can’t imagine, as a parent, getting a message while running out the door that says, “Oh, I’m sorry, we don’t have enough drivers. We won’t be running your route today.” It creates quite a bind for families. We’re going to alleviate a lot of bus schedule challenges because again, those drivers won’t have to have a CDL. But they are trained. The students are in good hands. The vehicle will have all the required safety features. It’s going to be a win-win for everyone.

DeWolf: As Christian referenced before, this is an idea policymakers in other states are likely to take up. Do you have any advice on how your leadership style allowed you to shepherd this bipartisan bill into law?

Senator Kerr: Yes. I guess I just bring the way I’ve always conducted myself. I’ve always been a good listener and, especially with all the bills we go through, I’m always listening to the pros and the cons. I feel it’s in that tension, it’s in that discussion, where we really craft the best legislation for the state or for that group a bill is affecting. I used to resist the tension and the fight. You can be at odds with members in your own caucus or members in the party opposite. I finally learned to embrace that tension, because again, that’s where the best legislation is hammered out and ideas emerge that you didn’t consider. Perspectives from all angles are really important. They can be put into a bill, making a good bill, a great bill.

The post Arizona State Senator Sine Kerr on transforming student transportation policy appeared first on Reason Foundation.

This was welcomed news, as Tennessee is one of only a handful of states that employ an outdated resource-based model for delivering education funds to school districts. In Tennessee today, only three percent of state and local operating dollars are allocated based on student characteristics, with the state’s Basic Education Program (BEP) formula currently tying funding to inputs such as administrative staff counts, textbooks and counselors. Not only does this diminish transparency, but it also means policymakers lack an effective lever for targeting dollars to the students who need them most.   

After months of public engagement, the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement proposal was recently released and features a weighted-student formula that would replace the state’s decades-old BEP model. We recently caught up with Commissioner Schwinn to learn more about this historic effort and what its prospects are for the 2022 legislative session. 

Smith: There’s widespread agreement that Tennessee’s current education funding system is broken. What’s wrong with the Basic Education Program (BEP) formula that the state uses to fund schools today? 

Schwinn: The Basic Education Program that currently funds Tennessee’s public schools is an outdated formula that is 30 years old. It is difficult to understand, offers little transparency and there’s very minimal accountability measures associated with it. After years of conversations and a robust public engagement process launched by Gov. Bill Lee in fall 2021, the state resoundingly heard similar feedback that the state needs to focus public education funding on funding the needs of students. Currently, 38 states have already transitioned to a student-based funding formula for public school education. Under the new proposed formula, dollars would follow students as long as they attend a public school in Tennessee.

Additionally, we know that students have different needs. We need a public education funding formula that takes those specialized needs into account and gives added weights to students based on those needs. Some basic examples would be students with special needs who require more instructional time and smaller classrooms, students who are English learners, or CTE and advanced placement courses. 

Putting the needs of students first allows us to fund students over systems and levels the playing field by putting the focus where it belongs- on students. 

Smith: In October, you and Gov. Lee called for a full review of Tennessee’s education funding formula that included 18 subcommittees, public town halls, and surveys. What did you learn from this engagement process? 

Schwinn: Tennessee knows what we want to see in a K-12 public education funding formula which was shown in the consistency of feedback we have received throughout the state. And now is the time to act. By launching a fully public engagement process, hosting in-person and Twitter town halls, and forming subcommittees with stakeholders from across the state, we learned that Tennesseans have a clear goal and desire for how we should fund our students and public education. From the more than 1,300 public comments and over 100 subcommittee meetings, we heard many of the same ideas from a multitude of sources. Stakeholders want increased support for students with special needs, improved wraparound services, additional funding for CTE, adequate funding for transportation needs, and more. The engagement process taught us that Tennesseans are engaged and focused on providing the best possible education for our kids to put them on successful pathways for college and career readiness. 

Smith: What are the key features and benefits of your proposal to overhaul the state’s funding formula? 

Schwinn: The new proposal, the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA), is a student-based funding formula that will meet each individual student’s needs. It includes various proposed investments for components like $6.6 billion for base funding for every public school student, $1.8 billion in additional funding to be allocated based on weights to address specific student needs, $376 million in direct funding for students to receive additional funding allocations to support specific programs like tutoring and $100 million in outcomes funding to be awarded based on achievement to empower schools to help all students reach their full potential. 

Additionally, the TISA has reporting and district accountability requirements. These include an annual TISA report delivered to the Tennessee General Assembly by the department and individual district-level accountability reports to be submitted by local school boards to the department to establish goals for student achievement in the current school year. The reports will also explain how the goals can be met within the local budget, and describe how the local budget and expenditures for prior school years enabled districts to progress student outcomes. 

Smith: Some have expressed concern that the reform effort is moving too quickly. What is your response to them? 

Schwinn: Our goal in this public process was to create a new public school formula to best serve all Tennessee students. In the two previous administrations, discussions were had to revise the current formula, and much of the feedback we have heard mirrors the same things that were being discussed then, indicating that a student-based formula is what Tennesseans want. Additionally, it is aligned with Gov. Lee’s priorities to keep students at the center and ensure the funding process is transparent. Now is the time to do what is best for our kids. 

Smith: What obstacles stand in the way of getting funding reform across the finish line in 2022? 

Schwinn: The draft legislation is making its way through the state legislative process. The department is ready and willing to work with the seven house and senate committees as they consider passing the TISA Act this session to answer questions about how the TISA will benefit their local students. 

Smith: What advice would you give to policymakers in other states who are looking to reform their school finance systems? 

Schwinn: What was reinforced is that transparency and open discussion are so important. Providing open access to fully public discussions where all Tennesseans could share their thoughts, ideas, hopes and dreams for education was essential. By listening to and collecting feedback from the general public and going through multiple levels of reviews by the 18 subcommittees, Tennessee is in a place to establish a student-based public school funding formula that serves the needs of all students. 

The post Commissioner Penny Schwinn explains how school finance reform would help Tennessee students appeared first on Reason Foundation.

A chief advocate for Advanced Opportunities was State Sen. Steven Thayn (R), the current chairman of the Idaho Senate Education Committee. The senator has a track record of sponsoring winning legislation that gives students more education options and pathways to early success. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Barnard: What do you think are the biggest shortcomings of the American public education system today?

Sen. Thayn: The biggest shortcoming of our education system is, it’s not family-friendly. Parents are not respected. Families must adjust to the system, the system does not adjust to them. I’m trying to make the system a customer-centric system where they adjust to the needs of the customers, which are families really. The question that you might ask yourself how much of the money do parents spend or have any say in what’s spent. They don’t have any say at all. They have nothing. They have to adjust to the system, so it’s very anti-family.

Barnard: Could you tell us a little bit about what kind of legislation you were interested in, leading up to the Advanced Opportunities program?

Sen. Thayn: They’re all focused on the same thing, giving choices to parents. I don’t know how philosophical you want to get in this interview, but if you’re coming from a limited government perspective, I’m not sure that there’s a national construct how to reduce the size of government other than cut programs, because people don’t understand how government grows. Government grows because it assumes responsibility, and responsibility is the marker of power. If you want to empower families or you want to reduce the size of government, you have to transfer responsibility back to families because that’s the institution that counterbalances government–families. Yeah, we’ve lost sight of that. How do you get people to accept responsibility because you can’t mandate it? All you can do is bring them close to it by giving them a choice. All of my bills are about giving parents choices so they can decide to accept responsibility or not. They’re not required to.

Barnard: Let’s talk about the Advanced Opportunities program then. Could you just briefly explain how the program works?

Sen. Thayn: Sure. The construct is fairly simple. You have a government program where, if students want to, they have a set of choices: dual credit, AP tests, summer classes, workforce training now, and career technical education exams. They can decide how to use the choices, that’s up to them, we just have a structure. Not only do they have the choices, but we provide some funding so they can really follow those choices. A local high school near where I lived prior to Advanced Opportunities had a corporate sponsor who said, “I’ll pay for all the dual credit classes.” It was a poor high school. So they went from about 300 dual credits to almost 1200 in one year. The impediment wasn’t the intelligence, or intellect, or desire of the students, it’s that they didn’t have any funds to pay for the classes. 

Barnard: Why do you think the program has been so popular?

Sen. Thayn: Because students have desires to succeed. Students that have a vision of where they’re going start to understand that they can escape the mediocrity of a regular high school class, get college credit, which will move them along their path. It unleashes the vision that students have for their own life.

Barnard: What’s interesting about Advanced Opportunities is that most students being served are public school students. They don’t have to go to a charter school or a private school to have more education options. Do you think that’s an advantage of the program? Is that one of the reasons that it’s so popular?

Sen. Thayn: Yes, it is. The reason we went that way is I have some issues with charter schools and other types of school choice because you’re still funding an institution. I’m interested in funding families, I don’t care where the families are. Most of the families in Idaho, because we have a very strong public-school tradition, are in public school. If I neglected that part and tried to provide choices for just those not in public school, there’s 90% of the parents I’d never have anything to do with. Just like you follow the money, well you have to follow the parents. What’s the number one problem with public education? It’s not parent-friendly because they don’t have choices. What does Advanced Opportunities do? It’s family-friendly because it provides some choices and funds the choices.

Barnard: Where do the funds live and how do families access those funds? How are the providers compensated? 

Sen. Thayn: It’s still being developed on the private school side. But on the public school side, they have access to a certain dollar amount of services. Each credit is $75, each summer class, like high school summer class, they can take online is $225. Every time they use a service, that amount is deducted from their account, but they never see the money. The money is sent from the Department of Education to the provider.

Barnard: Is it the Department of Ed that ultimately decides which providers are allowed to serve students and receive payment?

Sen. Thayn: Well, yes, but it’s spelled out fairly clearly in the law who can receive and they need to be located in the state of Idaho and a few other things.

Barnard: Is it a wide range of providers? What kinds of providers are popular?

Sen. Thayn: Well, community colleges are major providers. Universities do some. Some of the schools are providing some of their own. Like a school district might provide not dual credited, but high school classes during the summer. They might run a summer academy rather than take it online. Then the school would get funded through Advanced Opportunities because it’s an overload class. 

Here’s another positive consequence: the popularity of Advanced Opportunities has led to the statewide standardization of core college credits since so many Idaho students are taking college courses in high school now. This has made it easier for Idaho students to transfer credits between colleges. 

Barnard: What pushback have you gotten about the program?

Sen. Thayn: The major pushback has been from traditionalists in the legislature. They trust institutions more than freedom of choice. They’re also bothered by the program costing over $21 million because they don’t like that the program is controlled by the students and not them. 

When the program is really working right, it should cost about $50 million. But this is the best investment of money because it’s going through families, not through the institution. It’s not going through legislators. It’s not political. It’s going directly to fund choices. 

Barnard: What advice would you have for other states that are considering adopting this kind of program?

Sen. Thayn: Well, I don’t know what their concerns are, so I’m not sure what advice other than one simple thing, make sure that they come up with win-win solutions. That’s what we’ve tried to do in Idaho from the very beginning. The major points of every Advanced Opportunities milestone had a Democrat cosponsor so it is nonpartisan. Make sure it’s a win-win.

Also, make the families and students the gatekeepers, not the school districts. Because unfortunately, a lot of educators don’t believe all students can be successful in dual credit classes. What the accountability in Advanced Opportunities bill is, if they don’t pass the class they have to pay for the next one and pass it before they continue. I didn’t want to limit it to just upper-class students and high performers. In Idaho, the homeless students,  minority students, free and reduced lunch students—they participate at almost the same rate as their proportion of the population. It’s a few percentage points less, but it’s been pretty successful reaching out to anyone that wants to succeed.

The post Idaho State Sen. Steven Thayn explains the success of state’s Advanced Opportunities program appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Marguerite Roza, the director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, has followed how and where school districts are deploying their emergency funds. While she commends the speedy distribution of emergency funds and many districts’ efforts to meet the constantly changing context, she urges leaders to stay laser-focused on the emergency funds’ true purpose: ameliorating learning loss and getting kids back on track. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Schwalbach: What challenges do school districts face while spending the emergency funds distributed since the onset of the pandemic? 

Roza: We’re asking a lot of districts right now. In most districts, student learning took a seismic hit. The federal government did hand out big public money to spend—and fast—but with that came a massive workload for leaders who must quickly draft plans and launch programs amid ever-changing demands of the moment. We’ve seen some promising examples of districts responding quickly and being nimble with their funds, from the Atlanta district lengthening the school day by 30 minutes and paying $3,000 to each teacher to do so, to the DeSoto, Texas, district where they’re targeting $5,000 signing bonuses for teachers in high-need areas like science and special education. In another example, the district in Philadelphia acted rapidly to offer parents $300 a month to get their own kids to school in the wake of a bus driver shortage. But moving fast to stand up new offerings is tough work for districts and some seem to be bypassing hoped-for investments like adding learning time in part because of the logistical hurdles involved.

Schwalbach: What was the greatest lost opportunity during the past two years?

Roza: I’m worried we’re taking our eye off the ball on student outcomes. We do this even when we ask, ‘How are districts spending the money?,’ instead of, ‘What outcomes is it creating for students? Are students making progress with reading? If so, how many? And which ones? And for high schoolers, how many kids have failed classes, and are we getting them back on track to graduate?’

My sense is that a better way to track the value of this big public investment is to track whether that spending is bringing about some measurable progress on students’ outcomes.

Schwalbach: Moving forward, what recommendations do you have for school districts?

Roza: Elsewhere we’ve urged school districts to be conscious of impending fiscal cliffs. By cliffs, I mean that most new investments will be eventually cut since their funding relies on temporary federal dollars. School districts might consider investments that lead to fewer disruptions when cut. For instance, tapping retirees for temporary work instead of hiring new staff who could then get laid off when the funding dries up. It’s very disruptive for staff, families, and organizations, both politically and socially, when staff are pink-slipped. 

Another strategy to consider is pushing some decisions about relief spending down to schools.  Districts can take some of their relief dollars, say, $500 per student, plus an extra $250 for each low-income student, and have school principals decide how to spend the money. School leaders could spend it on stipends: for staff working late, for incentives for parents to return their kids to in-person learning, or for kids in middle and high school to spend 20 minutes on Khan Academy. Such localized flexibility lets people jump in and help in this all-hand-on-deck moment.

And districts can do more to communicate with families so they’re aware of the investments and know what the goals are.

Schwalbach: In a recent Forbes article, you propose that districts consider making direct payments to families. How would this work and is anyone doing this?

Roza: I said before that this is an all-hands-on-deck moment. (I was in the Navy, so that phrase resonates with me). With many districts facing staffing shortages, this seems like a time when districts might tap parents to help with various challenges. A district could pay parents to ensure their child reads for 20 minutes each night or completes their math homework. While it goes against the grain of many districts to write checks to either kids or parents, we are seeing some districts try it out.

There are districts paying kids to get vaccinations or paying parents to transport their kids to school (to relieve pressure on transportation systems with less capacity right now).

It’s a strategy that more deliberately leverages parents as the school district’s partners. Parents care tremendously about their kids, and if we ask them to step up in small ways, many of them would do it.

Schwalbach: I’m curious, what are you hearing in response to this co-production idea? 

Roza: The most common response we get is, “Are you sure we’re allowed to do that?” (Yes). And “Is that a voucher?” (No.) Direct payments aren’t vouchers since the funds are distributed by the district to families enrolled in the district. Funds don’t bypass the district as they would with a voucher. Rather, the district is choosing to use its own funds to get families to work in tandem with the district.

Another common question is “What are the mechanics? Do I have to collect IRS information on every parent who gets a payment?” The good news is that so long as the payment is less than $600 per pupil, school districts aren’t required to collect IRS information. To navigate this new field, districts could consider hiring an intermediary.

And districts worry that this mechanism won’t work for all families—which is true. (Take those who can’t ensure their kids are spending time reading at home or doing math homework in exchange for a stipend.) Districts would want to concentrate remaining funds on programs for those students who still aren’t making progress. That way, the district attacks the problem from all sides.

Schwalbach: Have any districts been especially successful at implementing a thoughtful recovery plan with relief dollars?

Roza: It’s early, and most districts have only spent a portion of the money so far. Some districts, like those in Boston and Chicago, are delivering a share of their dollars to schools for more customized uses for their students. We’ve seen a lot of innovative pay and stipend activity targeted to addressing specific staffing shortages or other challenges.  Places like Hawaii launched summer programs and Tennessee has a massive tutoring effort underway.

Of course, leaders need to stay flexible. We’re hearing some find that their plans to hire counselors turned up few qualified applicants; so, they need to pivot. Similarly, if a given plan doesn’t elicit positive student outcomes, the district needs to be able to shift quickly to a different approach and keep the focus on students.

More than anything, I hope that districts are measuring their own progress so they can know what’s working and what’s not. That’s what will keep the focus on getting students back on track. Imagine if a district set up systems to monitor early reading. Principals and teachers could adjust their efforts regularly to concentrate on those not making progress. Or consider a focused effort on student engagement that tracked whether counseling and other efforts were boosting on-time attendance, homework completion, and class participation.

We’ve got a lot of ground to cover to help schools and students reprioritize learning and get up to speed. This is a heavy lift for schools. But leaders now have dollars in hand (thanks to the federal investment) and need to pull out all the stops—including tapping their families—to ensure that it all happens, and soon. ESSER is a massive investment, and there’s a lot riding on these funds.  Now it’s up to districts to ensure their kids benefit.

The post Marguerite Roza discusses how school districts should use federal COVID-19 relief funds to improve student outcomes appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Under the policy, prospective course providers—such as non-profits, museums, and colleges—apply to the State Board of Education for approval. Applications are evaluated based on several factors including provider qualifications, expected outcomes, and student assessment plans. The first program was approved in December 2020 and students can now get academic credit for learning about Marine Biology at East Coast Science Center, participating in First Robotics, taking music lessons at North Main Music Center, and others.

Learn Everywhere is the brainchild of New Hampshire’s Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut, whose background as an entrepreneur and father of seven has helped shape his vision for what public education should look like. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Smith: Give us an overview of Learn Everywhere and how it started. Where did this idea come from and what problem is it addressing?

Edelblut: The impetus was an experience I had visiting one of our high schools. I walked in at 8:30 at night and there were about 25 kids doing really engaging things as part of a First Robotics program. Some of them are programming in Java, getting their robot to navigate various obstacles that they created. Others were working closely with Bosch engineers. They literally had a hacksaw out, building a robot.

This young lady comes up to me and says, “Mister, you’ve got to help us. The school closes at 10:00, and we need to stay open until 11:00.” And so, my first thought is, ding, I win the prize. I’ve got kids begging me to keep school open. But, the second thought I had was, these poor kids are going to go home and they’ve got to do two hours’ worth of homework because all of this learning they’ve been doing for the last five hours doesn’t count for academic credit. And I’m like, well, that’s so silly. They learn more stuff here than they have all day long during school.

Kids are inherently curious learning machines. What you have to do is try not to squash their curiosity. You have to try and find ways to nurture and encourage it. Too often, our education systems shut down curiosity. Instead, we should nurture that curiosity as much as we can. That means that learning is not limited from 7:30 to 2:30. Kids learn all over the place, all the time.

Smith: Walk us through how Learn Everywhere works.  

Edelblut: Most of the education reform works on a demand curve, but Learn Everywhere is different. It’s a supply side initiative where we look around and see where kids are already getting together and learning. Rather than building programs that might have little interest, we find ways to make this learning count toward their education.

Smith: Learn Everywhere was signed into law in 2018 and finally got its first program approved by the SBOE in December 2020. What obstacles did it face and what were some of the arguments levied against it?

Edelblut: K-12 education is very resilient to any type of innovation and change, because people who chose it as a vocation like traditional instruction models. That’s why they chose it, so why would they want it to change?

So, once the law passed it was basically a game of chess, and the educational establishment put up a number of obstacles. One of the biggest arguments is that school districts should decide if and when a student has mastered a subject in order to award credit.

But it was very hard for them to make this argument. After all, kids were learning at places like New Hampshire Academy of Science at Dartmouth College, where they’re working with top-end equipment with world-renowned professors. And so, they’re trying to argue and say, “Well, how can you trust a world-renowned physicist to teach these kids physics?” That just doesn’t fly very well.

But it’s not a zero-sum game. It is an expanding universe that we’ve created. The argument that we came back to time and again was that it needs to be about student learning, not about who did the instruction or where the instruction took place.

Smith: How are Learn Everywhere providers held accountable for student learning?

Edelblut: One might ask the same question of the traditional public education system, how do we know that they’re really held accountable? Usually, that is just a straw man.

We want to make sure that they’re mastering the things that they need. And so, when a Learn Everywhere provider submits an application to the state board of education, they have to describe how they’re going to determine that the kids have actually mastered the competencies. And it’s really interesting, because it actually creates an opportunity for innovation in assessment as well.

Smith: Currently, public education dollars don’t follow the student to cover Learn Everywhere courses. What do they typically cost families and what’s being done to ensure access for all kids?  

Edelblut: Our state board is very deliberate about asking applicants, how are you going to meet the needs of all the kids? 

For instance, the Boys and Girls Club has a great theater arts program that doesn’t cost anything to participate. Or there’s Friends Forever International, which has a free leadership program that specifically targets kids who are at high risk for dropout. When there are financial barriers, we try to talk to the programs about how to make them more accessible. How are you going to make sure that finances don’t ever become a reason for a kid not to be able to engage?

Smith: Do you see a future where the state’s school finance system funds Learn Everywhere courses? 

Edelblut: In some respects, it is already, through our Education Freedom Accounts program. For example, if you’re an EFA student, you can use funds to take math at Kumon Learning Centers. But I think ultimately, this will become integrated into the schools as another tool in the toolbox for kids.

Smith: What challenges does Learn Everywhere currently face? 

Edelblut: Right now, there are too many interested parties to get through the approval process. I just got some funding from a nonprofit that is going to work with programs to navigate the process because we have to translate what they’re doing into edu-speak for the state board.  

Smith: Are policymakers in other states considering similar programs? What advice do you have for them?

Edelblut: I’ve heard of about twelve other states that are looking at Learn Everywhere programs, and one of the things I think that will help to drive this is some of the national programs that we’ve signed up in New Hampshire. When the Boys and Girls Clubs in Michigan see what we’re doing, they’re going to be like, “Hey, we want to do this in our state.”

This is not a “build it and they will come” program. The one thing I say is be careful not to ruin the magic. For instance, in our conversation with First Robotic, they said, “Well, we’ll go create a curriculum…” I’m like, no, whatever you do, don’t create a curriculum. That will ruin it. Then the kids aren’t going to want to go. You’re doing everything you need to do. Don’t ruin the magic by trying to respond to educators.

And truthfully, for my first couple of approvals through the state board of education, that was a problem. They kept saying, “Well, how do we know? How do we know this, or how do we know that?” It’s because the kids are already there, engaged, and learning. It just doesn’t look like education the way that we think of it in our own heads.

Smith: You often talk about unbundling education. What does this mean and why is it important?

Edelblut: It’s basically about mass customization. Just like everything else in the world, you can have mass customization, but education tends to still be so monolithic and homogenized. The question is, do you trust parents to make decisions? When you choose something, you’ll get bigger agency. When you choose something, you have a vested interest in that. You have agency in that choice, and you want to make sure it’s successful.

More information on New Hampshire’s Learn Everywhere program can be found here: https://www.education.nh.gov/pathways-to-education/learn-everywhere

The post Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut on New Hampshire’s Learn Everywhere program appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Since March 2015, Sen. Moorlach has represented the 37^th district in Californias’s State Senate, where he has been working to build upon his successes in Orange County to improve the state’s finances.

Reason’s Austill Stuart interviewed Sen. Moorlach on his career in public service, how his accounting background has worked to improve finances in local government, and his plans and challenges for doing the same in California’s state government.

Austill Stuart, Reason Foundation: Looking back to the beginning of your public service, you got involved the 1990s as someone on the outside warning about a possibility of bankruptcy in Orange County that eventually happened, leading you to being appointed as county treasurer. Where did you start trying to right the course on the county’s financial situation? 

California State. Sen. John M.W. Moorlach: Some of the first things we looked at were, should we be outsourcing the investment process? Should we be outsourcing the tax-collection process? And what are we to do with the relationships with outside vendors like the banks, the investment houses and the software underwriters? How do we handle dealing with employees when we needed to downsize?

So one of my first tasks was to reduce my workforce by about 11 percent . You learn quickly that the paradigm in government is not excellence; it’s longevity.  I had to let a lot of wonderful new people go and I was stuck with some of the older people that maybe were not as productive and as innovative, but they were protected by their union. Also, those that had elevated to management did not have union protection, so some really great middle managers had to be laid off. It was really frustrating to deal with the government “last in first out” approach to management.

We looked at the idea of outsourcing our investment process but found it was too costly. Not only was it better from a cost standpoint to hire competent money managers internally, they also were more aggressive in getting better bids than the private sector was. For the idea of trying to outsource the tax collection side of it, that didn’t provide the kind of RFP (Request for Proposals) responses that I was looking for.

There was a firm on the East Coast that was assuming responsibility for collecting taxes for a few counties, but it actually went bankrupt, leaving a lot of counties without the infrastructure to do it internally. We looked at a lot of things, but just letting the staff know we were looking at outsourcing certainly forced them to bring up the level of their game and be more serious that, “Hey, if you want to continue here, we’ve got to prove we can do this cost-effectively and appropriately.” So that was one of the components to what I did to restructure and reform the department. I also worked as just one of many of the officers of the county as a whole to structure a strategy to exit from bankruptcy, so I can’t take a lot of credit. I was just a member of the team.  We worked on ideas and then exited bankruptcy within 18 months.

Then we enacted a lot of other reforms for the whole county. One reform concerned results-oriented government, identifying what our metrics were. What was our job and how do we do it and how do we measure it and compare it to other governments? Or internally? That was a real good process which then led to doing annual business plans for every department, eventually leading to each department completing a 10-year strategic financial plan. So then your business plan and your budget for the next 10 years would fold into the 10-year strategic financial plan. We knew where we were going as a county 10 years ahead, but you were making decisions now that we knew what the impacts would be in the future as opposed to doing budgets every year.

We implemented a lot of fun changes about 12 years later when I became a county supervisor in 2007. We initiated a performance audit department, which did a lot more heavy lifting than, say, an internal audit department. It was more of a managerial function of exploring how certain departments are operating and if they are operating as efficiently as they possibly could, which provided a lot of improvements. Just trying to calm everything down, trying to calm the markets, trying to get a good rate of return, trying to be innovative in investment style.

When I became treasurer, we were very transparent and very visible right from the get-go. We had better communication. We did a monthly report as opposed to a quarterly report. We established an investment oversight committee, which monitored the market a lot more closely.

At that time, Alan Greenspan was the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Our game was, “What is Greenspan going to do next? And how can we anticipate it with the duration of our investment holdings?” We were accurate more than 90 percent of the time. So that gave a little bit of added value in the service we were providing. It was a fun opportunity to manage almost $7 billion in funds for the county and its taxpayers.

Stuart: Did the bankruptcy help you get things done that otherwise may have languished as good ideas that sat on the shelf?

Moorlach:  Well, I put a little note on my credenza that said, “Policies, procedures and oversight.” Our focus: How do we run a good shop post-bankruptcy? Having been through a bankruptcy, everybody knew that we were digging out and had to grab the oars and pull. If that didn’t work for them, then other departments or other careers would be their choice. But we were looking for people that could add value.

For instance, I hired a certified cash manager, who came in and started reviewing the banking relationships with the county and we started saving significant amounts of money quickly because the prior administration was sort of sloppy: We had $400,000 a year in banking costs just for our social services agency. We made some dramatic changes in our working relationship with them that they didn’t like at first, but then they realized they were not to be subsidized by every other department in the county. We had a lot of fun getting people to rethink things.

We had a lot of fun getting industry to rethink how they dealt with governmental business. Orange County had 50,000 welfare checks to pay on the first of the month. Most banks didn’t want those people in their banks on the first of the month.

But instead of giving them the checks, why don’t we just give them positive pay cards through the point of sale opportunities and just swipe it through at ATM machines or at grocery stores, etc.? That was a fun exercise, but at the end of the day, we realized the cost savings alone weren’t going to be enough.

But the banking industry knew we were looking because they heard about our efforts with the Federal Reserve Board and the state banking agency. It made them step up to the plate and be a little more cooperative. It provided a little bit of leverage that we weren’t afraid to look outside the box to get something resolved.

We had to really work with industry to rethink what they were going to do in their roll in servicing government work if they wanted the business. We had a lot of fun because of the paradigm. We could force certain companies that maybe didn’t do so well in providing good service before the bankruptcy to step it up. We even encouraged one major national software firm that does investment software to give us a contract. It provided the services for $1 for the first year of the contract just to try to set the relationship right.

Stuart:  What kind of challenges did you run into during the dozen years or so that you served as treasurer before moving to the county board of supervisors? 

Moorlach: You certainly run into the public employee union paradigm, meaning you can’t lay off employees that might have been lagging in their ability to provide a good work product. You just had to learn to live with that. You also learn that it would take a pretty thick file of documentation to remove employees that were not producing to the standards that were expected—a little different than the private sector. Other than that, I didn’t have too much trouble improving things.

The California Legislature was really nervous about us making unique kinds of changes. It was coming from me and out of Orange County. They knew we were trying to make appropriate and necessary decisions and not invest in anything scary or risky because we were now the most conservative portfolio in the state. We had fun trying to be innovative.

One idea we pursued was trying to start our own bank because most of the major banks did not want to have welfare recipients in their branches. How could we issue 50,000 checks on the first of the month?

Stuart: Was there a limit as to how far you could push reform serving as treasurer or treasurer-tax collector?

Moorlach:  There was. When you saw your Board of Supervisors making certain decisions, it was frustrating to say, “Hey, what you’re doing may put future boards in jeopardy because of the financial impact of the policies you’re approving.”

One example was granting retroactive pension benefits, effective 2002, to the date of hire with an improvement of the benefit just because there was a dot-com boom. It was distressing to me and it was one of the few major reasons for me to leave the treasurer position and run for supervisor to see if I could at least do some damage control after the votes were already cast. Because once you give a pension benefit enhancement, you can’t take it back. And, at the time, I was screaming, “This is a lobster trap that you’re walking into. You can walk into it, but you can’t walk out, so don’t do it!”

Three of the five supervisors, all Republicans, voted for another pension increase for the rank-and-file. That’s when I announced I was going to run for supervisor in 2006 because I’d rather be on the dais and at least lose 4-1 than to watch a 5-0 vote on some of these inappropriate fiscal decisions because a lot of elected officials are not business majors or defined-benefit pension plan students. But I had the privilege of serving on the retirement board for the county for close to a dozen years. Certainty, I had my share of actuary presentations to understand how a defined­-benefit plan works. That was a reaction to a dilemma that most of California and the nation face.

Stuart: You’ve said that pensions were a major issue for you in deciding to make the leap over to the county board. Can you maybe explain a little bit more about that issue and what motivates you?

Moorlach: What I decided to do was leave a position that paid a lot more than the county supervisors earned and it was not subject to term limits, which was one of the things a supervisor is subjected to. They are only allowed two terms, so we had to jump in and start swinging right away with a long list of ideas we wanted to implement.

One of the first things we did was address retiree medical care. The county had an unfunded liability of $1.4 billion. We were able to negotiate with the bargaining units. They agreed to make a number of significant changes, which resulted in a 71 percent reduction in the unfunded liability: from $1.4 billion to $412 million, about $1 billion dollars. If we could do the same at the state level, we could reduce an unfunded liability by about $50 billion dollars. It was a great opportunity to attack at that level. Then we had to deal with all the legal onslaughts of “hey, you can’t do this,” because it’s treated as a vested right. We had to go through all the expense and time to have judges rule that the changes were allowable.

Another area we took on: was that, The California Constitution states, in two sections, you have to retire debts in the year they are created. If you can’t pay it off in that year, then you have to get two–thirds voter approval. So we sued the deputy sheriffs, who received the 50 percent increase in their pension benefits. Their pension formula went from 2 percent at 50 to 3 percent at 50. That means 3 percent of their final salary times the number of years on the job. The deal was made retroactive to the date of hire, so their benefits went up dramatically. If they were going to retire before the change with $100,000 salary after 25 years, they were going to get $50,000 a year if they retired. But if they waited a few days for the new formula to kick in, they would have received a pension of $75,000 a year.

The plan had not been actuarially funded for that massive increase, so we said that’s a debt. When you take a fully funded pension plan and you improve the benefits by 50 percent overnight, your plan becomes 2/3 funded. We said the whole one-third is a new debt, liabilities that have to be paid by future boards.

We took that to the local Orange County Superior Court. The forces against us had it moved to an L.A.-area court. Superior Court judges must go up for election every six years. The decision had very poor citations. And when asked how she came to this conclusion, her response was, “Well I’m looking forward to your brief when you file it at the appellate level.” We fought it in the Appellate Court in L.A. on constitutional grounds.

The unions put up a lawyer by the name of Miriam A. Vogel, who had just retired from the appellate court, and who greeted her former colleagues at the court, “How ya doing, how’s it going?” Her position was simple: “They’re going after my pension and they’re going after yours” – and she sat down. In less than two weeks, the Appellate Court ruled the liability was not a liability, but an estimate, though we’ve got an amicus brief from accounting professors from around the nation saying it was a liability.

Then we took it to the California Supreme court, only to have new Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye, whose husband was a police sergeant soon to retire. They decided not to hear our case, so we lost that battle. Very unfortunate, as we could have saved the state and local municipalities a boatload of grief, burden and money. Gov. Jerry Brown and I had a conversation about the case, and he realized that granting retroactive benefits was crazy. And so, in his Public Employee Pension Reform Act of 2013 (PEPRA), he put a specific provision that they could not grant retroactive benefit increases, so at least we got a little consolation prize.

Another thing we did in 2009, not too long after I got on the board, was address new tiers for new hires. We were probably the first county in the state to do that, which is now common practice with PEPRA. We also set up a new plan, a hybrid, that was partially defined-contribution and partially defined-benefit, but at a much lower formula than what was being offered. This would be available to new and existing employees. However, for current employees, we found ourselves fighting an Internal Revenue Service ruling. If there’s ambiguity in the tax code, the IRS will issue a Revenue Ruling to clarify their position.

Ours was Revenue Ruling 2006-43. The U.S. Treasury was unwilling to change its position, which was basically that you only have one choice—whether or not to make the pension plan selection. Providing a new lower tier was a second choice, and that would disrupt the deductibility of the contributions and the taxability of the pension benefits, by jeopardizing the tax-exempt status of the retirement trust.  So it would be taxable, as pension payments were being contributed; as opposed to when the pension benefits were being received later on in retirement.

We tried to convince the U.S. Treasury and the IRS to change, but we found the national public employee unions were pretty strong and were lobbying the IRS and the U.S. Treasury just as aggressively, if not more than we were. When you deal with the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the SEIU at the national level, it gets even more interesting. But at least we had a solution for allowing current employees to opt out to a lower pension formula, which would have been a lot of assistance in lowering unfunded liabilities for the county. That’s still being lobbied and addressed even as we speak.

We took on a lot of things that are now kind of normal. But we were very innovative in Orange County in my two terms as a supervisor in starting the conversation and moving the ball forward and encouraging others to do the same.

Stuart: You mentioned trying to put into place a hybrid defined-benefit/defined-contribution-style blended retirement system. Was the objection there that you were trying to make it an option for current employees so then you run into the one-time election sort of issue? Was it that you were trying to create another option that current employees could switch and that was the trigger for the federal disallowance?

Moorlach: There are’ were two issues impacting Orange County. The first was when public safety went from a 2 percent at 50 pension benefit formula to 3 percent at 50. Rank and file positions—as distinct from public safety officers—had a different formula; it was 1.67 percent at 65 and they wanted to get it to 2.7 percent at 55, almost a 60 percent increase. But the supervisors that approved that said you had to pay with an additional withholding for the unfunded liability that was created.

That’s why we didn’t sue those unions; we just sued over the public safety benefit change because they didn’t have a funding source. All these employees that were close to retirement didn’t have to pay much in the way of withholdings because they left the building, leaving it to all the younger employees to pay for their unfunded liability.

That’s usually the way public employee union boards work. It’s the older employees that are represented on their boards and they’re always focused on a benefit for themselves, more than for the younger, newer employees. But the newer employees were saying, ‘‘We don’t want a big pension; we want to pay our mortgages. We want to pay for childcare.’’ So we said, OK, here is a different pension formula, not as aggressive as the older employees are getting, but it will increase your take-home pay because you won’t have to withhold as much, so that was the draw. That was sort of the motivation for helping younger employees.

The pushback we got was the unions had sort of cut a deal. They did not want to see defined contribution anywhere in any form or fashion so they really pushed back with our hybrid plan in the public sector. You see hybrids in the private sector all the time, but in the public sector, they said, wait a second, we don’t even want to talk defined contribution plans.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger was Governor, he had a commission try to figure out such things, to put together lots of wonderful binders. I was on a panel speaking to one of their monthly meetings for the 12 months they were together.

One of the individuals at the table represented the firefighter’s’ association and he mentioned they had converted their retiree medical to a defined contribution plan. And the head of the police officers’ union up and down the state jumped at him and said, “Hey, I thought we had a deal. We said we weren’t going to go defined contribution.” The firefighter union leader had to say, “I’m talking about retiree medical, not the pension plan.” “Oh, ok, thanks.” He let it out of the bag that these guys were unified. There was no way you were going to have a defined contribution component at all. We had that pushback, even though the union—the local union—adopted it.

The other unions around the state and the nation went ballistic over our proposal. We had to fight that and then we had to fight it when this Revenue Ruling popped up. We had a lot of employees who had the choice when they became new employees: you could have the higher formula or the lower formula. We had a high number of new employees select the lower formula. We had a lot of employees that wanted to get out of that higher formula but would still be prevented from doing so because of this Revenue Ruling.

Stuart: Reflecting on your two terms as an elected supervisor, what accomplishments are you most proud and, conversely, what you were unable to accomplish that you really sought out to do and why?

Moorlach: I was really pleased with what we did with retiree medical—it was a massive paradigm shift. It saved the county $100 million dollars a year. By the time I left as a supervisor, the county had saved about the same amount it had lost when the portfolio imploded back in 1994–95. But I felt pretty good that one individual in a team effort was able to somehow recompense the county.

One of the things I tried to do that didn’t succeed was to put a measure on the county ballot in the fall of 2014 that would have allowed for more outsourcing of jobs at the county. Two of my Republican colleagues were running for state Senate: one in a district that had more Democrats than Republicans, so leadership for the Republican Party didn’t want that ballot measure on because they were more concerned about getting back a Senate seat than I was concerned about trying to reduce pension costs.

I had to pace myself over the eight years. That was one strategy I’m sorry I couldn’t implement while I was a supervisor.

Stuart: Do you see a linkage between those two issues, privatization and pensions?

Moorlach: Actuaries assume a certain amount of turnover by new employees that will not vest, so whatever they contributed and whatever the county or the state contributed on their behalf would go into the bigger pot. That’s all factored in trying to calculate what the annual contribution formulas will be for municipalities or anyone that has a defined benefit pension plan.

The day you hire someone, you have a massive liability in that you have to start funding for their pension. But you’re never going to have it revoked or removed because of the “California Rule,” which pretty much says the day you start working is the day that the employer has made a massive commitment to pay for your pension plan. It’s so big and onerous, it’s so unfortunate that more elected officials don’t appreciate the magnitude of just hiring people and taking on this lifetime obligation.

That’s why outsourcing for simple services, and even difficult ones, is much better from a managerial standpoint and a stewardship standpoint than hiring employees and keeping them on, even through difficult times when funding isn’t available, which is certainly something we’ve encountered now that I’m at the state level.

Stuart: Turning to Caltrans, you’ve long pointed to overstaffing issues on the planning and engineering side and the case for more outsourcing. You’ve looked at other states and how they compare to California. Can you maybe explain a little bit more about the situation there and what you would like to see happen?

Moorlach: When I showed up in Sacramento, I was told that the Legislature needed to have a special session to raise a transportation tax so that California could fix roads. We decided we should analyze Caltrans and see what’s going on, because we have state audits finding that they have 3,500 engineers and architects too many on staff, and nearly two-thirds (62 percent ) of the projects that Caltrans finished are over budget. We have a department that’s not as efficient as it could be. We started looking at the metrics and found California spends three times the national average for every mile of road that it maintains and improves: We’re not a four-season state! Michigan is doing much better at maintaining its roads than we are, and they have winters.

So then you ask yourself, “What’s going on?”, and start digging a little more. Then, you realize that Caltrans is being run rather poorly compared to other states.

A good number of states use 50 percent outsourcing, as does the Orange County Transportation Authority when you look at their financial reports and see that half their money goes to pay for salaries, half goes to outside consultants. The state of Arizona is at 80 percent to 85 percent outsourcing; the state of Florida is at 80 percent. California is run by a public employee union, the PECG (Professional Engineers of California Government) who have dictated that there’s no way they’re going to try to eliminate positions or workload, but we said, “Look, 54 percent of your employees are at age 50 or older. They’re already candidates for retirement. You’re going to have a natural attrition that will allow for a migration of work going to outside consultants. By the way, once you get to 50 percent, should funding decrease, you have the ability to eliminate the contracts and save the state money as opposed to hanging on to employees.”

It’s a sad situation where you can’t even move from 10 percent to 15 percent outsourcing in a state where the metrics and the audits coming out of the state’s own auditing agencies—not some independent gadfly group—are already condemning Caltrans’ ability to perform its services. An efficient structure doesn’t include paying $70,000 per mile for administrative costs. How do you in good conscience ask the residents of this state to pay in car registration fees and gas taxes when we’re giving money to a department that is run so inefficiently?

In fact, as you dig into the metrics, you find that of every dollar of funding that goes to Caltrans, only 20 cents hit the pavement. When you look at the last 11 years for the state of California, the budget for Caltrans has averaged about $10.5 billion per year. This state has never made transportation a priority. There’s a different agenda going on here. During that period of time, gas tax revenues have gone up which means that the state has actually reduced its amount of skin in the game and the amount of money that the gas tax has gone up is in the billions.

When we received audit reports while I was a county supervisor for the sixth most populated county in the nation, with a $5.5 billion budget, we were streamlining—enough that if you received an audit report that negative, the department head’s head would have rolled. We would have made massive changes, quickly, as the governing board. I don’t see that happening in Sacramento. I don’t know who the CEO of Sacramento is. If it’s the governor, he hasn’t been moving very quickly to fix Caltrans. If it’s the Legislature, I haven’t seen them move other than to raise taxes and that isn’t the right answer.

Now you’re seeing this problem I foresaw a dozen years ago. I ran for supervisor because you could see that pension obligations were going to crowd everything else out and something is going to suffer. I just think it’s disingenuous that it has to be roads, because that’s where taxpayers feel it the most. I think the average Californian pays about $700 a year just for damage to their cars because of a condition of the roads; it’s a crime. That’s what happens when the employees start to run the company and they run it for their benefit, not the benefit of the customers. In the private sector, once employees run the company for themselves, that’s a company that’s a candidate for bankruptcy.

Stuart: You mentioned earlier that, when you came into county office as supervisor, you had a list of reforms you wanted to implement. Did you walk into your service at the state level with a similar mindset? If so, what does your list of your reform priorities look like?

Moorlach: I definitely wanted to see what we could do with retiree medical and to fix the pension issue— I’m really concerned about the fiscal condition of the state. The state’s comprehensive annual financial report, the CAFR, which contains the basic financial statements of the state, in 2018 shows an unrestricted net deficit of $168.5 billion dollars. That’s a massive number, and the per capita puts California in 46th place based on the 2011 or 2012 numbers and 42^nd based on the 2018 numbers. We’re in the bottom states—thanks to such states as Illinois, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey, we’re not last.

When I was elected as a county supervisor, the unrestricted net assets showed a $30 million deficit. When I left in 2014, it was a $300 million surplus. I left Orange County in much better shape than I found it—both as treasurer and as supervisor. I have 20 years of experience running a major municipality, so I know what needs to be done.

By the time I’m done as a state senator, I want to say that we’ve created a stronger balance sheet. That’s got to be done by looking at everything more globally, rather than just saying we need a tax for this and a tax that, the tobacco tax for this, and a gas tax for that.

We need to look at the whole picture and say how do we run this state with the revenue sources that we already have? How do we address the liabilities? How do we address improving this balance sheet? That’s sort of my game—I’m the only certified public accountant out of 120 elected legislators.

I don’t have specific goals like I did when I started, and before I was sworn in as a supervisor. But I have five broad categories of focus: pensions, retiree medical, unrestricted net assets, no new taxes, and knock off the nonsense. We don’t need high-speed rail. We don’t need to fix global warming out of California. We’re dealing with some massive projects and ideas that have nothing to do with making California solvent. In fact, it’s the opposite. It discourages business from staying here. Voters cannot figure out why we’re not building dams instead of high-speed rail. We’ve got to illuminate to the Legislature and the governor that some of these priorities are out of whack and need to be adjusted.

Stuart: For clarification, when you talk about unrestricted net assets being negative, can you describe in layman’s terms who may not know what that means?

Moorlach:  When you run a business, you have assets and you have liabilities and the difference is retained earnings. In government world, we call that number net assets, which are comprised of four different numbers. The first is, you pull out of the net assets your fixed assets like roads, administration halls and pipes, because you really can’t sell them off; I mean, you could, but it would be difficult. You might be able to securitize them. You pull that big chunk out.

Then you pull out money that belongs to others. In the case of Orange County, we have federal and state funds in our bank account that haven’t been spent yet for social programs, so you pull that out. Then you pull out any business-type activities. Government has two components: one is government related and the other is non-government related. Government related is all that activity you do based on receiving taxes and performing the services you’re supposed to. Non-government business-type activities are when you run some kind of business that’s an enterprise. In Orange County, we have an airport and a landfill system, and the county is not allowed to take money out of those two systems because, in the case of the airport, the FAA doesn’t allow the airport to be a profit center, and the county landfill cannot either. We’re responsible for them, but they’re not supposed to be a revenue generator for the county.

You pull out those net assets, and then you come to the final number. Usually, it’s called unrestricted net assets and it’s on the balance sheet and it’s there in black and white. You will see that for a lot of municipalities it’s negative, which means they have more debt than they should. With this and the de-risking going on at CalPERS, you’re seeing a lot of newspaper articles showing how bad the financial situation is becoming for city X and county Y and it’s not pretty.

The horses are already out of the barn but now we’re actually accounting for it and showing the historical impact of what this is doing to these counties and other special districts. Hopefully, it will start waking up the state and the nation to the dilemma that we’ve found ourselves in.

Stuart: You’ve now had 20-odd years or so in public service pushing for reform. What are some lessons learned and what advice would you offer to those who might be following in your footsteps getting into government today, especially with respect to how to push reform and the limits of doing so?

Moorlach: I would love to challenge individuals with MBA’s and CPAs and CFPs and other professional designations. To think about running for elected office, which means they have to make significant sacrifices in family time and earning capacity to help their fellow citizens. We need a lot more fiscal brains in elected office. People that really understand how balance sheets and income statements work and can analyze a budget. I’d love to encourage people with fiscal backgrounds to get involved.

A lot of accountants tend to be kind of quiet and introverted individuals. They’re not really accustomed to a public limelight. I would say, if you have that skill set, you are desperately needed to be the adult in the room when it comes to a lot of the financial silliness that’s occurred because of pensions and other promises being put in the shadows and now finally coming out to the light of day.

I would add that it’s a big chore to step up and disagree with public employee unions—be prepared for an unpleasant campaign. Take heart in spite of all the negative mail, TV commercials and all the other things you might have to endure, you’re a part of the solution for resolving and reforming government so that we don’t give a massive debt to our kids, our grandkids and our great-grandkids. Because, by doing nothing, this nonsense just continues.

We must educate critics to help them understand that they’re not going to be able to pursue their programs if they don’t pay attention to the nickels and dimes as they’re putting their budgets together. There are trends. You need to watch the trends and what they’re doing to push other programs out. That’s the job—trying to message and communicate so they understand the ramifications of their decisions.

John Moorlach has represented District 37 in the California State Senate, which includes portions of Orange County, since March 22, 2015. His career in public service began over two decades ago, when the Orange County Board of Supervisors appointed Moorlach to serve out the term of County Treasurer-Tax Collector following the county’s bankruptcy, which he predicted would happen.

After being re-elected to County Treasurer-Tax Collector twice, in 2006 voters elected John to serve in his first of two terms on the County’s Board of Supervisors, where he continued his focus on reforming the county’s budget practices and sounding the alarm on the county’s growing unfunded liabilities.

Prior to serving as Orange County Treasurer-Tax Collector, John Moorlach was a Certified Public Accountant, Certified Financial Planner and Vice President of Balser, Horowitz, Frank & Wakeling, an Accountancy Corporation, and was the administrative partner of its Costa Mesa office.

A 1977 graduate from California State University in Long Beach, Moorlach was recognized in 2014 as the CSU Long Beach College of Business Administration Alumnus of the Year. Moorlach passed the C.P.A. exam in 1978 and completed his studies for the Certified Financial Planner designation in 1987.

The post California State Senator John M.W. Moorlach on Results-Oriented Government appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Although residents have been pleased, local city leaders continually look for ways to improve service delivery. In 2009, the city combined with nearby contract city Johns Creek to pursue a new, fully-integrated emergency call management system—known as the Chattahoochee River 911 Authority, or ChatComm—managed by the private firm iXP, which city leaders credit for improvements in service delivery as well as responding effectively and quickly to policy changes surrounding public safety.

Reason Foundation’s Austill Stuart and Leonard Gilroy recently spoke with Sandy Springs City Manager John McDonough to discuss the city’s successes and challenges in managing its service contracts and improvements made along the way, lessons learned from over a decade of managing a contract city, and the process of transforming from a community mostly reliant on county-provided public services to a municipality largely reliant on privately provided public services.

Austill Stuart, Reason: Since you decided to pursue plans for your new regional 911 service in 2009, which led to the creation of ChatComm, what’s the biggest change you’ve seen in comparison to your previous arrangement with Fulton County?

John McDonough, Sandy Springs City Manager: It’s night and day from a service delivery standpoint—the responsiveness we have today, we did not have previously. We were dissatisfied with the service under Fulton County—there weren’t really any metrics, the quality of the service was not good, and the citizen feedback that we had been receiving gave it poor marks. So, Wendall Willard—our city attorney at the time and a state representative—assisted us in getting a 911 bill through the legislature, which allowed us to establish our own E911 Service.  

With the new system, we started with Sandy Springs and Johns Creek. The issues of responsiveness and accountability were very important to us, and with ChatComm, the accountability would remain with the two cities, and that allowed us to determine what the appropriate performance measures and the key performance indicators were going to be. And at that point, we were responsible for the service delivery once ChatComm had been established.

So, the biggest change has been the improved level of service: the responsiveness, and improved customer service.

Stuart: Since ChatComm has been in operation, has it always been contracted out to the same provider, or have there been multiple providers, or a period of in-house management?

McDonough: We did our staff work internally and looked at what might be the best method for day-to-day operations. We looked at metrics and determined both Sandy Springs and Johns Creek were committed to the outsourcing model. So the manager from Johns Creek at the time and I put our heads together and said, “It makes sense for us to do this jointly and outsourcing’s worked for us across a wide variety of other services; let’s see if we can find someone in the private sector that has the requisite experience and qualifications to do this.”

We then put out 911 services for bidding, and that’s how we started our relationship with IXP. There was an initial five-year agreement that was extended another five years—we have about another 18 months on the current, fixed-price contract agreement.

Stuart: In those nearly eight years since ChatComm’s launch, what have been some of the biggest lessons learned from its management and operations? Have there been any course corrections?

McDonough: We learned that total service-level delivery from a single provider with extensive expertise—which includes responsibility on their part for facilities and technology, along with day-to-day operations—can be a highly successful model. We started with two cities initially, and have since added two more: Dunwoody and Brookhaven.

I think there’s a very good lesson from that for others about the speed of how a similar operation or transition can be rolled out if you use the outsourcing methodology and the process we went through. We value customer service highly, and with IXP, our citizens and businesses have received great customer service over the past nine years.

What’s been impressive to me is the police and fire chiefs’ ability to change policies and procedures and how responsive the private partner has been to adapt and make changes in operating procedures to implement those policies.

Our fire chief, Keith Sanders, came in roughly three years ago with a different philosophy on handling dispatch. He met with iXP leadership, and in very short order, made those changes to policies and procedures.

We recently adopted a new “false alarm” ordinance and the protocol that goes along with that.  iXP has shown great flexibility in changing processes to implement the new ordinance. And the nice thing about it is, it has not just been the police chief and the fire chiefs of Sandy Springs and Johns Creek that are IXP’s customers, but they also have police chiefs from Dunwoody and Brookhaven to support. For me, those are the ultimate drivers—they are the consumers of the service; ChatComm needs to support their needs. The fact that a private company has been able to meet and exceed their expectations for nearly nine years has been pretty impressive.

Another thing that has impressed me is how quickly iXP adapts to technology changes and the opportunities to make service improvements. At ChatComm, we do a “technology refresh” about every 36 months. Having a private sector partner that does business across the country, with both the public and private sector, allows us to benefit from best-practices.

Stuart: Through your tenure as city manager, what’s the biggest change you’ve seen in how Sandy Springs operates and how its services are delivered?

McDonough: We’ve been very consistent from a leadership standpoint: both in terms of elected officials and management in utilizing a priority-based approach to how we manage the city. We’ve been committed to the contract/outsource model; it has served us well. Our core focus has really remained unchanged: it’s about providing a high level of customer service.

We have had some different companies provide services, and we’ve made some tweaks to scopes of services based on experience as we redo RFPs. We’ve learned some lessons on how to make a better RFP and have made some modifications in our service contracts. We’ve always experienced a high level of service and customer satisfaction since we first began utilizing the outsourcing model.

Stuart: What’s the biggest change you’ve seen comparing pre-incorporation service delivery to post-incorporation service delivery?

McDonough: It’s very similar to the 911 service—the high level of service, the quality, and the response of the service providers to our citizen and business customers. We now have the ability to set our own priorities and to see the fruits of being able to set those priorities in terms of feedback from our citizens.

Fulton County has over one million people and seven commissioners—obviously, the level of attention and responsiveness that a community can provide with 105,000 people is different than one with a million people. With the incorporation of Sandy Springs, we were given the freedom to develop a service delivery model, or customer service platform, to provide what it is our citizens are looking for.

Stuart: An important part of contracting out services concerns ensuring the contract terms align with the effective delivery of government services. Oliver Porter, in his first book, Public/Private Partnerships for Local Government, called performance metrics a “two-edged sword,” in that while effective performance measures will result in quality service delivery, poor measures can result in poor delivery, and their ineffectiveness may be difficult to detect. Can you name some services where identifying the proper metrics has been easy, and some others where getting contract terms to align with effective delivery has been more difficult?

McDonough: We talked about 911; that’s pretty straightforward—we have specified call answering times and dispatch times, so those are pretty straightforward.

Finance, that’s another task-based service. You have X number of tasks, and either they get done or they don’t within a set period of time.

Public Works might be a little more difficult, a bit more art than science, since you’re talking about litter pickup and maintenance of rights-of-way. So, we’ve tweaked how we evaluate those services through the years. We have a community appearance report card, where every week, a senior member of the city manager’s staff will go out with a field services manager, a contract manager who oversees those contracts, and we assign the contractor a grade every week. If there is poor performance, we sit down with the leadership of that company and point out what we are seeing and share with them what our expectations are in getting it fixed. So, there’s a good contrast between Public Works and 911 or Finance, which are more transactional-based evaluations.

Stuart: And for those public works tasks that are more difficult to assess, the best means of ensuring performance would be monitoring progress as much as is feasible, so doing so every week would seem to provide as effective a feedback loop as one could hope for.

McDonough: Yes, and another example would be Community Development. There you have code enforcement which is both proactive and reactive. We still have a 24-hour call center that now has a chat feature as does our 911 center. I think we were one of the first to implement that, and I think that’s given our customers another option to provide us with feedback and to respond to their requests for service.

Everything starts with our 24/7/365 citizen response call center, and the scripts and responses that we have developed come from 12 years of experience. We may not have an answer for every call that comes in, but we’ve got answers to 99 percent of them based on experience; so, they’re standardized, and the customer service representatives provide responses to different citizens based on experience of resolving similar requests in the past.

Not everyone has a 24/7 call center, and given the value we receive from it, the return on investment for our community has been very impressive. They are able to consistently achieve over a 94 percent rate of resolving calls before having to transfer them outside of the call center. What that means is that (most of) these calls aren’t getting transferred to me, my assistant manager, the department heads, or their departments, because the call center resolves the customer’s inquiry over 94 percent of the time.  

Stuart: Turning briefly to the city’s operating facilities, a 2012 New York Times article noted your unconventional approach to office space—renting part of an industrial park, but with the new “City Springs” PPP development underway, it appears that won’t be the case for much longer. Can you describe the decision-making process that led you to pursue the project and how is progress going?

McDonough: There were three primary drivers. Number one, we went through a community-based planning process back in 2012. It was about a year long, and in December of that year, our mayor and council adopted the City Center Master Plan that was the blueprint for this project. The goal was to create a “sense of place” for the community. We’re a suburban city and didn’t have a traditional downtown. Our community thought that it was very important to create a “sense of place.” So, that was the first one—creating a place where the community could gather and create its own identity. It’s a section off Roswell Road about 14 acres and is a mixed-use development.

The second one—the cost of paying the rent over time, just wasn’t worth it in the long run. It was more cost-effective for us to own our own facility.

The third driver of the City Springs project was for it to act as an impetus for economic development. Since we announced the project, there’s been multiple adjacent assemblages purchased and are under construction today.

The city’s investment in City Springs was a catalyst for private redevelopment along Roswell Road. We’ve seen 80,000 square feet of new retail installed along Roswell Road and more than 1,000 new housing units added as part of these mixed-use developments. The construction is removing outdated strip shopping centers, and in several cases, older apartment communities, and replacing with developments that better match the master plan created by the community, featuring mixed-use, connectivity, and opportunities to access amenities via transportation other than car.

Overall, we’ve committed close to $350M to redevelopment efforts.

Stuart: With respect to the current RFP for parks/recreation and court services the city is planning to release, what are some of the attributes you seek in service providers of those services?

McDonough: We have some restrictions. If an entity submits a proposal for IT or Finance and is awarded a contract, they cannot submit a proposal for other services. We felt it would be a conflict of interest. We structured that about five years ago when we went through the first rebid process after having a single provider. We think that change has served us well. But if one company wants to submit proposals for everything other than those, there’s no restriction.

To your question on some of the things we’re looking for, in prospective service providers—first, a proven track record of success. They need to show us what they’ve done in the past, where they’ve operated. They need to have a “can do” attitude, demonstrating going “above and beyond” in terms of providing customer service. Their approach to customer service is very important. Their ability to be innovative and bring new ideas on how we can improve customer service is important.

Second, transparency is an essential part of the proposal. We’ll pay them fairly, but they need to be transparent on what their costs will be. And that’s something that will continue to evolve as we go through these bidding processes, to make sure that transparency is there.

Third, flexibility is important to us. People work here work on behalf of Sandy Springs and its citizens. Just because they have a scope of work doesn’t mean that they aren’t expected to demonstrate flexibility. If a task arises outside of a worker’s scope of work, but that person is capable of handling it, then we expect them to handle it.

And fourth, it needs to be cost-effective. So, those are the things we’re looking for when we’re evaluating prospective providers.

Leonard Gilroy, Reason: From your perspective having spent time in more “traditional” community management, what were some of the differences you could see in the scale of contracting that Sandy Springs does versus more traditional, in-house public operations with very little outsourcing? Did it require a different level of sophistication of contract management skills, or did it build upon what you already knew from your previous experience?

McDonough: I think you’ve hit on an important point there. Obviously, I’d had some contract management experience, but not to the degree to which we contract out in Sandy Springs. But it’s all scalable. To give an example, I used to manage a fleet maintenance contract for another city and had to know about contracting methodology, overseeing a contract, finding and collecting data for key performance indicators, and that sort of thing. So, contract management is scalable—I think people can go out and get educated on this type of thing—but (with Sandy Springs) significantly more of those skills were needed.

Whether contract employees or city employees, they all come to work with a good attitude to approach their work. You set the expectations with the workforce; you want to develop a good relationship with the contract management lead, whether it be on-site or off-site, in the event you have issues or challenges. And from time-to-time, we do and we work through those things.

But again, it’s all scalable. If you’ve managed one contract, you’ve managed contracts—there are varying degrees of sophistication in contracts, as I’ve learned with the City Springs contract. Our budget now for the City Center project is close to $230 million—it took a good year just to negotiate the construction contract. We’ve learned it is essential to put in the time and effort to making sure your contract and your scopes of work and your performance measures are well thought out.

It’s a team effort: senior leadership (manager’s office, finance and procurement staff, legal department) works and evolves with the rest of the team on how to make better contracts and to get a better product out of this process. It’s very important to have a well-balanced team. You can’t just delegate the work of RFP and contract development to the procurement and legal departments. The operators and the senior leadership must be involved. One of the keys to our success is how we’ve approached effective service delivery as a team effort.

We have dozens of contracts here—in addition to managing a traditional workforce, we also have to keep an eye on our contracts to make sure the community is getting what it’s supposed to be getting from a quality standpoint. It’s definitely different, but I think the benefits far exceed the challenges. It’s an evolutionary process: we learn more each year about how to improve the contracts, and I think you’ll see, as the RFPs come out, we continue to evolve to make (services) better, and that’s what we should be doing. That’s what our job is—to continue to make improvements to providing great customer service.

Gilroy: This is Phase 3 of contracting out services of Sandy Springs—the first being the initial bidding upon incorporation, and the second being the first scheduled rebidding after several years in place. Is it fair to characterize Sandy Springs’ transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2 as going from large aggregated contracts to more disaggregated and more detailed contracts?

McDonough: Yes, I would say that’s a good generalization; I concur with that.

Gilroy: Will we see something different in the transition from Phase 2 to Phase 3?

McDonough: I think you’ll see more transparency and attention paid to the burden rate. What you’re paying for in a service level contract is the capital—the position, the person to fill the position. Let’s say their salary is $50,000, that can be described as 1.0. The “burden rate” is the factor you apply to the salary that ends up being the total cost for that particular person, if you will. So you multiply the $50,000 by “one-point-something.” And the “something” is the burden rate, which is made up of health benefits, retirement costs, FICA, Medicare, the overhead and profit for the company (providing the services). So, when you add all of those things up—say they come to 75 percent, you multiply the salary of $50,000 by 1.75, and that 1.75 is the burden rate. What I’m saying is, in this next go-around, we’re taking a bigger interest in the breakdown of the burden rate, to make sure it’s fair and it’s reasonable. Which isn’t to say that it hasn’t been (fair and reasonable) in the past, but we’ve had different burden rates for different companies.

We’re also seeing a broad range of benefits for contract employees. We’ve identified a set of what we call “most important requirements,” and they really drive our preparation of RFPs, and one of those requirements is continuity, so we want to keep our high performers, because they have institutional knowledge, and they’re doing a good job for us.

We took a dive into what constitutes the “full burden rate” and set some markers for what we believe should be a threshold for the type of benefits that are provided, and the percent of the total burden rate that those benefits should make up. And that comes from experience and a desire to maintain that quality. We’ve also put a maximum—something we had not done in the past—on the burden rate.

Stuart: Would you say that the contract city model could potentially work anywhere? Or is it more easily confined to certain types of cities?

McDonough:  Any city could go through our RFP process. It could be departmental; it could be task-based. I think more and more you’re seeing cities find that there’s a cost-effective benefit from outsourcing and contracting for certain services from an economy of scale standpoint. It makes sense to do that. But certainly for larger functions—Oliver (Porter) did a good job of pointing this out—it really just comes down to political will. If the will is there to go in that direction, anything’s possible.

Gilroy: Can you share any lessons learned from your experience performing the balancing act of operating a startup city with a heavy reliance on complex public-private partnerships, while simultaneously keeping the citizens that created the city happy?

McDonough: The biggest lesson learned is to be flexible, to have a continuous process-improvement program in place. We’ve got a whole set of guidelines that we put out to our senior leadership team and anybody who works for Sandy Springs that we see as Keys to Success. And one of the things that we talk about as being important is the speed of delivery. It doesn’t just have to be good in the 21st century, it’s got to be quick, so how quickly we adapt to the feedback we get is essential to meeting the public’s expectations.

That’s why our 24/7 citizen response call center is so important to us. We’re able to log everything that comes through, and work flows from that as does feedback, both good and bad. The fact that we have a central repository for feedback and our communications director, who reports directly to the city manager, allows us to adapt very quickly to changing expectations and requirements and to meet and exceed our customers’ expectations.

Appointed in January 2006, John McDonough serves as the city manager of Sandy Springs, Georgia and is responsible for the oversight and management of one of the most extensive applications of public-private partnerships (PPP) for the provision of local government services in the country. Under Mr. McDonough’s leadership, Sandy Springs has received numerous awards and praise for its operations, including recognition for innovative contract management and competitive sourcing, as well as receiving high marks for the city’s livability. In addition, Mr. McDonough has provided advisory assistance to numerous cities in the United States and abroad concerning the use of competitively sourced municipal services.

Prior to joining the City of Sandy Springs, Mr. McDonough served as city manager of Beaufort, S.C. and other South Carolina cities. A retired colonel with more than 26 years of active and reserve service in the U.S. Marine Corps, he holds a Master of Public Affairs degree from Indiana University and a Bachelor of Arts in political science from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina.

The post Georgia’s First Contract City Continues to Innovate Private Service Delivery appeared first on Reason Foundation.

The Innovators in Action 2016 series profiles released to-date are listed below:

• Using PPPs to Improve Services in Sumter County, Florida
  Interview with Sumter County, Florida County Administrator Bradley Arnold
  Austill Stuart
  November 22, 2016

The post Innovators in Action 2016 appeared first on Reason Foundation.

The Innovators in Action 2015 series profiles released to-date are listed below:

• Taking on Infrastructure, Pension Challenges in Georgia
  Interview with Georgia State Senator Hunter Hill
  Leonard Gilroy
  July 29, 2015
• Implementing Best Value Procurement in Oklahoma
  Interview with Steve Hagar, State Purchasing Director, Oklahoma
  Leonard Gilroy
  May 8, 2015
• Reforming Public Safety Pensions in Tequesta, Florida
  Interview with Michael Couzzo, Village Manager, Village of Tequesta, Florida
  Leonard Gilroy
  February 25, 2015

Earlier editions of Reason’s Innovators in Action are available here:

• Innovators in Action 2014
• Innovators in Action 2013
• Innovators in Action 2012
• Innovators in Action 2009
• Innovators in Action 2008
• Innovators in Action 2007

The post Innovators in Action 2015 appeared first on Reason Foundation.

The Innovators in Action 2014 series profiles released to-date are listed below:

• Modernizing Procurement in Missouri
  Interview with Missouri State Representative Paul Curtman
  December 30, 2014
• Evolving the Public-Private Partnership Model in Johns Creek, Georgia
  Interview with Mike Bodker, Mayor, Johns Creek, Georgia
  Leonard Gilroy
  October 29, 2014
• Building Pennsylvania’s Transportation Public-Private Partnership Program
  Interview with Bryan Kendro, Director, Office of Policy & Public Private Partnerships, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
  Leonard Gilroy
  September 29, 2014
• Incentivizing “Pay-for-Success” Partnerships at the Federal Level
  Interview with Indiana Congressman Todd Young
  Leonard Gilroy
  August 28, 2014
• Advancing Pension Reform in Oklahoma
  Interview with Oklahoma State Representative Randy McDaniel
  Leonard Gilroy
  July 29, 2014
• Creating a Multimodal Freight Program in Florida
  Interview with Juan Flores, Administrator for the Freight, Logistics and Passenger Operations Office, Florida Department of Transportation
  Baruch Feigenbaum
  June 30, 2014
• Reducing Bridge Maintenance Costs in South Carolina
  Interview with Richard “Lee” Floyd, State Bridge Maintenance Engineer, South Carolina Department of Transportation
  Baruch Feigenbaum
  May 27, 2014
• Reforming Defined-Benefit Pension Systems in Bakersfield and Kern County
  Interview with Zack Scrivner, Kern County (CA) Supervisor
  Leonard Gilroy
  April 28, 2014
• From Traditional to Contract City: Navigating Financial Distress in Pontiac
  Interview with Louis Schimmel, former Emergency Manager, City of Pontiac, Michigan
  Leonard Gilroy and Michael LaFaive
  March 25, 2014
• Pioneering State-Level Pension Reform in Michigan
  Interview with Douglas B. Roberts, Ph.D., former Michigan State Treasurer
  Leonard Gilroy
  February 21, 2014
• Pioneering Road User Charges in Oregon
  Interview with James Whitty, Manager, Office of Innovative Partnerships and Alternative Funding, Oregon Department of Transportation
  Leonard Gilroy
  January 27, 2014

Earlier editions of Reason’s Innovators in Action are available here:

• Innovators in Action 2013
• Innovators in Action 2012
• Innovators in Action 2009
• Innovators in Action 2008
• Innovators in Action 2007

The post Innovators in Action 2014 appeared first on Reason Foundation.

The Innovators in Action 2014 series profiles released to-date are listed below:

• Reforming Defined-Benefit Pension Systems in Bakersfield and Kern County
  Interview with Zack Scrivner, Kern County (CA) Supervisor
  Leonard Gilroy
  April 28, 2014
• From Traditional to Contract City: Navigating Financial Distress in Pontiac
  Interview with Louis Schimmel, former Emergency Manager, City of Pontiac, Michigan
  Leonard Gilroy and Michael LaFaive
  March 25, 2014
• Pioneering State-Level Pension Reform in Michigan
  Interview with Douglas B. Roberts, Ph.D., former Michigan State Treasurer
  Leonard Gilroy
  February 21, 2014
• Pioneering Road User Charges in Oregon
  Interview with James Whitty, Manager, Office of Innovative Partnerships and Alternative Funding, Oregon Department of Transportation
  Leonard Gilroy
  January 27, 2014

Earlier editions of Reason’s Innovators in Action are available here:

• Innovators in Action 2013
• Innovators in Action 2012
• Innovators in Action 2009
• Innovators in Action 2008
• Innovators in Action 2007

The post Innovators in Action 2014 appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Edited by Reason’s Leonard Gilroy, the Innovators in Action 2013 series profiles a range of innovators who have demonstrated leadership through action on privatization, competition, government re-invention and other market-based policy reforms designed to reduce the costs of government and deliver more value to taxpayers. Innovator interviews or self-penned articles will be added regularly throughout the year, so be sure to check back frequently for new content.

The Innovators in Action 2013 series profiles released to-date are listed below:

• Pursuing Fiscal Self-Reliance in Utah
  Interview with Utah State Representative Ken Ivory
  Leonard Gilroy
  November 27, 2013
• Advancing Pension Reform in San José
  Interview with Pete Constant, San José (CA) City Councilman
  Leonard Gilroy
  October 31, 2013
• Closing the Gap: Designing and Implementing Pension Reform in Utah
  Interview with Dan Liljenquist, former Utah State Senator
  Leonard Gilroy
  September 17, 2013
• Pioneering Social Impact Bonds in the United Kingdom
  Interview with Jane Newman, International Director at Social Finance UK
  Tom Clougherty
  August 13, 2013
• Colorado’s Contract City, Part 2: Innovation and the Future of Public-Private Partnerships in Centennial
  Interview with Centennial, Colorado Chief Innovation Officer David Zelenok
  Leonard Gilroy
  July 29, 2013
• Colorado’s Contract City, Part 1: Public Works Contracting 2.0 in Centennial
  Interview with Centennial, Colorado Mayor Cathy Noon and City Manager John Danielson
  Leonard Gilroy
  June 24, 2013
• Building Jacksonville’s Public-Private Partnership Program to Drive Efficiency, Quality of Life
  Interview with Renée Finley, Commissioner of Public-Private Partnerships, City of Jacksonville, Florida
  Leonard Gilroy
  May 7, 2013
• Breaking the State’s Control of Municipal Pensions in Massachusetts
  Interview with Barry Greenfield, Town of Swampscott, Mass. Selectman and Founder/Publisher of EfficientGov.com
  Leonard Gilroy
  April 8, 2013
• Creating a Managed Lanes Network in Atlanta
  Interview with Georgia Department of Transportation Deputy Commissioner Todd Long, incoming SRTA Executive Director Chris Tomlinson and SRTA Director of Operations Steve Corbin
  Baruch Feigenbaum
  March 19, 2013
• Using Innovative Policy Tools to Rebuild Colorado’s Infrastructure
  Interview with Michael Cheroutes, Director, and Nick Farber, Enterprise Specialist, of the Colorado Department of Transportation’s High Performance Transportation Enterprise
  Harris Kenny
  January 2, 2013

Earlier editions of Reason’s Innovators in Action are available here:

• Innovators in Action 2012
• Innovators in Action 2009
• Innovators in Action 2008
• Innovators in Action 2007

The post Innovators in Action 2013 appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Edited by Reason’s Leonard Gilroy and Harris Kenny, the Innovators in Action 2012 series profiles a range of innovators who have demonstrated leadership through action on privatization, competition, government re-invention and other market-based policy reforms designed to reduce the costs of government and deliver more value to taxpayers. Innovator interviews or self-penned articles will be added on a monthly basis throughout the year, so be sure to check back frequently for new content.

The Innovators in Action 2012 series profiles released to date are listed below:

• Privatizing Lottery Management in Pennsylvania
  Interview with Pete Tartline, Executive Deputy Secretary of the Budget, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
  Leonard Gilroy
  December 20, 2012
• Delivering Florida’s 21st Century Transportation System Through Tolling, Managed Lanes and Public-Private Partnerships
  Interview with Ananth Prasad, Secretary, Florida Department of Transportation
  Leonard Gilroy
  November 21, 2012
• Addressing Ohio’s Transportation Funding Challenges Through Streamlining, Public-Private Partnerships
  Interview with Jerry Wray, Director, Ohio Department of Transportation
  Leonard Gilroy
  November 13, 2012
• Implementing Managed Lanes in Minneapolis-St. Paul
  Brad Larsen, MnPASS Policy Manager at the Minnesota Department of Transportation, Discusses Successfully Adopting Managed Lanes
  Baruch Feigenbaum
  September 10, 2012
• Transforming Education at the Local Level: Douglas County Leading the Way
  Interview with Dr. Elizabeth Fagen, Superintendent of Douglas County (Colorado) School District
  Harris Kenny
  August 28, 2012
• Making Phoenix a 24-Hour City: Privatizing City Permitting to Cut Red Tape and Drive Economic Development
  Interview with Sal DiCiccio, Phoenix (AZ) City Councilman
  Leonard Gilroy
  July 31, 2012
• Looking Back at Indianapolis’ Parking Meter Lease, One Year Later
  Interview with Michael Huber, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, City of Indianapolis, Indiana
  Leonard Gilroy
  June 27, 2012
• Creating a Culture of Competition to Improve Corrections
  Interview with Gary Mohr, Director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction
  Leonard Gilroy
  May 31, 2012
• Reinventing Libraries in Osceola County, Florida: Partnering with the Private Sector to Create Standards of Excellence
  Interview with Osceola County, Florida Commissioner Frank Attkisson
  Harris Kenny
  April 12, 2012
• The Dynamic Duo of Carrollton, Texas: Creating a Culture of Competition in City Government
  Carrollton, Texas City Manager Leonard Martin and Director of Competition Tom Guilfoy
  Leonard Gilroy
  April 5, 2012
• Offering State and Local Governments New Tools for Infrastructure Delivery in Texas
  Interview with Texas State Rep. Jim Murphy
  Leonard Gilroy
  March 5, 2012
• Reforming Local Government in Colorado Springs
  Interview with Chuck Fowler, CEO and Chairman of The City Committee of Colorado Springs
  Harris Kenny
  February 14, 2012
• Tulsa: Open for Business
  Tackling city’s challenges requires willingness to embrace innovation, competition and market ideas
  Dewey Bartlett, Jr., Mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma
  January 13, 2012
• Building a World-Class Infrastructure PPP Program in Puerto Rico
  Interview with David Alvarez, executive director of the Puerto Rico Public-Private Partnerships Authority
  Leonard Gilroy
  September 8, 2011

Earlier editions of Reason’s Innovators in Action are available here:

• Innovators in Action 2009
• Innovators in Action 2008
• Innovators in Action 2007

The post Innovators In Action 2012 appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Edited by Reason’s Leonard Gilroy, Innovators in Action 2009 profiles nine innovators who have demonstrated leadership through action on privatization, competition, government re-invention and other market-based reforms designed to reduce the costs of government and deliver more value to taxpayers:

• Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue created the Commission on a New Georgia, an advisory group of corporate executives partnering with the state to re-engineer its bureaucratic machinery.
• Former New South Wales, Australia Premier Bob Carr embraced privately financed toll roads as a means of delivering infrastructure better, faster and cheaper than traditional government approaches.
• Louisiana Commissioner of Administration Angele Davis is playing a central implementation role in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s wide-ranging efforts to streamline the state bureaucracy.
• Under the leadership of State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek, Louisiana’s burgeoning school choice movement is using transparency, standards and accountability to improve student achievement and turn around low-performing schools.
• Indianapolis Mayor Gregory Ballard has advanced an array of competition and government reform initiatives designed to control costs, improve government performance, and bring best business practices to government.
• Former Florida Council on Efficient Government Executive Director Henry Garrigo helped to create a national model for a state center of excellence in privatization to ensure sound decisionmaking on outsourcing proposals.
• Chicago’s Chief Financial Officer Gene Saffold oversaw the Windy City’s $1.15 billion lease of the city’s downtown parking meter system in 2009.
• Former AT&T executive Oliver Porter led a citizen task force that created the template for the largely privatized government in Sandy Springs, Georgia.
• Chief Information Officer Eric Gillespie and his colleagues at Onvia saw major gaps in the federal government’s commitment and ability to deliver on stimulus spending transparency— and they stepped in to fill it by creating Recovery.org at a fraction of the cost it took the feds to create their own Recovery.gov.

“Amidst today’s massive deficits and red ink, we need government leaders who are willing to ditch the failed status quo and seek out better ways of doing things,” said Gilroy, director of government reform at Reason Foundation. “We hope the examples and experiences offered by these innovators will inspire reform-minded officials at all levels of government to provide better, leaner and cheaper government to taxpayers.”

The post Innovators in Action 2009 appeared first on Reason Foundation.

“From crumbling roads to collapsing bridges to gridlocked roads, our nation’s infrastructure is in desperate need of repair and expansion,” said Leonard Gilroy, editor of Innovators in Action and director of government reform at Reason Foundation. “Governor Perry and Secretary Peters have led us down a new path, a path that shows there are better and more sustainable ways to fund, build and operate infrastructure. Their leadership offers hope that after years of falling behind, we can build a 21st century transportation system that protects our mobility and spurs the economy.”

In addition to Peters and Perry, the Reason Foundation publication features essays by and interviews with U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker, Utah Senator Howard Stephenson and Representative Craig Frank, New Jersey Senator Raymond Lesniak, the late Texas Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson, Denver Regional Transportation District CEO Cal Marsella, King County (WA) Executive Ron Sims, and BASIS Charter Schools co-founder Olga Block.

In their own words, this bipartisan group of leaders reveal how they are reducing government spending and reforming bureaucracy; how they are collaborating with the private sector to build new infrastructure and deliver cost-savings and better services to taxpayers; how they are advancing market-based transportation solutions to reduce congestion and improve mobility; how they reforming public education delivery and advancing school choice; and how they are reforming urban public transit operations.

Attachments

• Full Report

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“Ask taxpayers and they’ll tell you they pay too much in taxes and government wastes way too much money. Business as usual won’t cut it anymore,” said Geoffrey Segal, director of government reform at Reason Foundation and editor of Innovators in Action. “Change is never easy, but government agencies at every level can learn valuable lessons from these trailblazers who have shown there is a better, more effective and efficient way.”

In addition to Giuliani, Bush and Owens, the Reason Foundation publication features essays by Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle, Virginia Delegate Chris Saxman, Hamilton County (OH) Commissioner R. Patrick DeWine, Secretary of Indiana Family and Social Services Administration E. Mitchell Robb, Jr., the City of Charlotte’s Business Process Improvement Manager David Elmore, and Reason Foundation’s Robert Poole and Lisa Snell.

In their own words, these leaders reveal how they are reducing government spending; how they are collaborating with the private sector to deliver cost-savings and better services to taxpayers; how they are using public-private partnerships to build roads their governments couldn’t afford on their own; how they are working with high-tech firms to improve technology and increase Internet usage; and how they reforming Medicaid, health and social services.

Attachments

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