El Dorado County Grand Jury 2010 - 2011 Operations Reviews and the Potential for Public/private Partnerships

The new Chief Administrative Officer for El Dorado County has identified four top priority county functions warranting review and improvement:  Information Technology  Human Resources  Management  Financial Accounting These four functional areas are being reviewed at a department head level and have broad affects throughout all county operations.

There is an increasing recognition that county government operations are behind the times, insular in outlook, and stagnating from lack of competition...or at least the competition of new ideas. According to one prominent county official, “The County has a monopoly on the provision of certain services. We are lacking public feedback. We are discovering that the county is pretty good at compliance, but not so good at service delivery.” 81

As evidenced most recently by the use of the Economic Development Advisory Committee (EDAC), the clear potential exists to mobilize volunteer resources available in the wider community. El Dorado County has a diverse, rich and deep skill set of those who are still working or who recently worked in professions and occupations directly relevant to county operations. Whether it was a business, non-profit, social or charitable group, private association or community group surveyed during this report, there was a uniform and clear consensus that substantial experience and expertise exists and could be made available to meaningfully participate as part of a review team focused on improving a particular segment of county operations. In several instances the Grand Jury received comments like, “Nobody from the county has ever asked for our help.”

Every representative of a group interviewed for this report immediately and forthrightly stated that there would be “no problem” in obtaining volunteers from the community to assist in the conduct of operational reviews. Not one person interviewed for this report indicated otherwise. In one instance a prominent private sector individual in El Dorado County volunteered on the spot to participate as a member on a review team comprised of county officials and qualified individuals from the private sector. There was a clear consensus among those groups contacted for this report that there would be two key areas of vulnerability for a proposed mechanism to produce qualified individuals for participation on review teams. Those two areas were either a lack of leadership from the County Administrator’s Office and/or a lack of willingness of individuals to volunteer their time and expertise for their county. A third area of vulnerability endangering potential success would be lack of acceptance of the review group at a departmental level.

A major determinant of success for the establishment and good use of public/private review teams was how the CAO reached out to and invited the meaningful participation of the public.

Participation on operations review teams could entail very different levels of commitment ranging from a few weeks to six to twelve months. This did not cause any party interviewed for this report to change their assessment about the potential participation of individuals from outside county government.

There was a strong recognition by everyone interviewed for this report that it would be very important to understand that county government exists to protect and further the greater good or public interest. Review teams could not be comprised of individuals or representatives from an interest group whose primary or exclusive reason for participating was to enhance their own or their own group’s interest at the expense of everyone else’s interest. One interviewee perhaps put it best when they said, “The greater the private interest, the greater the 82 risk.” This concern pointed to the need for clear standards to avoid conflicts of interest by participating members of a review team.

A significant benefit of such collaboration between public officials and private individuals (between the local public and private sectors) would be to foster a greater understanding of the professional environment, the unique challenges and demands, and yes, the inherent differences in operational flexibility, accountability, and speed of the sectors and how each may function. The rhetorical if not the practical clash of cultures between the public and private sectors could be diminished with greater cooperation, collaboration and communication focused on a specific and tangible need and objective. Mutual benefit would be the preferred goal of such reviews, with both government employees and members of the public seeking and obtaining a “win-win” of less cost, less time, greater productivity, and enhanced service delivery, with ultimate benefits to both a renewed faith in the ability of local government to function as well as an improved local economy.