SPPD Faculty, Local Officials Address Fiscal Sustainability
USC News
University of Southern California
* From left, Dan Mazmanian, Martin Plourde, Michael McGrath, Bev
Perry and Greg Devereaux
* Photo/Tom Queally
By Matthew Kredell on November 3, 2011 1:08 PM
California’s local governments and major public institutions are facing
a fiscal crisis with no clear road map forward. With that in mind, USC
hosted a forum last month on building long-term fiscal sustainability in
this era of budget austerity.
The event was presented by the Judith and John Bedrosian Center on
Governance and the Public Enterprise at the USC School of Policy,
Planning, and Development (SPPD), the American Society for Public
Administration and the National Civic League (NCL).
SPPD faculty partnered with the NCL to study cases of exemplary
leadership in fiscal sustainability within California.
Mark Pisano, senior fellow at SPPD, and Michael McGrath, chief
information officer for the NCL – two supervisors of the project –
discussed the first four case studies with civic leaders and students at
USC.
SPPD professor Dan Mazmanian, director of the Bedrosian Center,
moderated the forum, which also featured Bev Perry, former mayor of the
city of Brea; Martin Plourde, assistant superintendent of the Whittier
High School District; and Greg Devereaux, chief administrative officer
of San Bernardino County.
“Looking at what we did in the past is not going to help us for what
we’re going to be confronting in the future because everything is
changing so fundamentally,” Pisano said. “The rules of the game for what
is fiscal sustainability and how we achieve it are changing, and it’s
changing the culture of government.”
In the first part of what is proposed to be a three-year set of
California case investigations funded by the John Randolph Haynes and
Dora Haynes Foundation, the project team – which includes SPPD professor
and Bedrosian Center research director Shui Yan Tang – looked at four
civic entities that are answering budget challenges with innovative
leadership.
The case studies focus on Los Angeles County, the city of Long Beach,
city of Brea and the Whittier Union High School District.
In analyzing the results, Pisano offered the following guidelines for
navigating these difficult economic times now and in the future: Do not
spend long-term money for the short term; if there’s going to be
increases, something needs to be taken away elsewhere; trust,
transparency and financial fluency are essential; use performance-based
decision making to relate resources to what is being accomplished;
create partnerships with other government agencies, nonprofits and the
private sector; and use inventiveness and creativeness in bringing
financial resources to the table.
“Most of the governments in California are not currently fiscally
sustainable,” Devereaux said. “There are those cities and counties that
don’t know their level of sustainability and many more that don’t want
to know. I think that, unquestionably, these kind of case studies – the
principles involved and the practices of what it takes to be sustainable
– are valuable.”
From her experience as mayor of Brea, Perry pointed out that there
always is money out there, money that cities wouldn’t normally get, that
can be brought in with a little ingenuity. In one example, Brea
discovered it had an 800 megahertz radio band that could be used for
public safety announcements. By selling use of the radio band to nearby
cities that didn’t have one, Brea continues to make money.
In an example of partnerships with other government agencies, Brea
reached an agreement to share command structures of fire departments
with Fullerton so each city could employ fewer fire captains. Money was
saved without reducing services.
“Brea is very entrepreneurial,” Perry said. “Sometimes it was risky, but
if you want to bring in extra dollars, that’s what you do.”
School districts are a different entity because additional funds cannot
be raised. The districts must figure out how to survive on the dwindling
budgets they get from the state. In Whittier, Plourde said the district
managed to roll back salaries by 3 percent and then freeze them, all
while raising class sizes three times in the past five years.
In meetings with employee representatives, Whittier was open in
presenting its numbers of what the budget currently looked like,
compared to what it would look like in four years with and without
freezing salaries. Suggestion boxes were placed at each school asking
how else the budget crisis could be managed.
“It’s really a matter of trust,” Plourde said. “As we’re continuing to
be transparent and the trust is there, our associations know that, when
we have money, we are going to be sharing it and that, when we don’t
have money, we will need them to assist us in working together
collaboratively to sustain us.”
Fiscal sustainability means that future generations will have the same
benefits of current generations. To meet society’s needs going forward,
Pisano said that government needs to redefine itself every year.
“It was good to bring together four levels of jurisdictions with the
school district and cities of different sizes to see how the issue
affects all of them,” said Nikola Hlady, a second-year Master of
Planning student at SPPD, who also is interning at the city of Pasadena.
“The way Plourde described how his employee groups and organization were
able to develop a common bond where they would support each other in
good times and share the sacrifices in bad times was an inspiring element.”
From: A. Papazian