At times it felt like a Dilbert cartoon come to life. The Board of Supervisors' government audit and oversight committee held a 90-minute hearing today on the civil grand jury's report slamming the mayor for failing to track his administration's performance in a transparent way.
Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi wants clarity from the mayor's office
It turns out Mayor Gavin Newsom has six or seven different ways of tracking performance, some of which he authored as a supervisor and some of which he's come up with as a mayor.
There's the accountability index that tracks the outcome of every promise he's made since becoming mayor. There's the Strategic Pillars that evaluate 10 areas of government including health, homelessness and education (some of those pillars are also under the accountability index, while others are not).
There's San Francisco Stat which emphasizes statistical trends, evaluations for departments, evaluations for workers and more, but our eyes glazed over at that point and we were rendered temporarily unable to take notes.
Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who called the hearing, said there's little point in keeping all of these measurements if the taxpayers can't understand them. He added that even if the measurements show a certain department is lacking, there's no consequence.
One especially surprising part of the hearing centered around a program in which managers get an annual bonus equivalent to 1.5 percent of their salary just for filling out performance evaluations of their workers and themselves. Of the 974 managers who qualified for the bonus last year, 780 took advantage of it. Officials with the Human Resources department vowed this program was ending due to the budget crisis.
The civil grand jury recommended that Newsom "take charge by managing the city by the numbers, rather than just publicizing those favorable to him" and ditch buzzwords and acronyms for a streamlined, easy-to-understand way of tracking how well the government's running.
Leonard Kully, foreman of the grand jury, said he was heartened by the hearing, especially the controller's idea of creating a performance barometer, much like the economic barometer that office updates frequently.
"I think overall we certainly accomplished our purpose because they just didn't ignore us or walk away," Kully said.
Nathan Ballard, Newsom's press secretary, called the grand jury's report "shallow and misleading" and said the mayor's administration is remarkably accountable and transparent.
Posted By: Heather Knight (Email) | June 04 2009 at 03:55 PM
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/cityinsider/detail?entry_id=41213
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