Government: A Citizen Voices Issue Framework

The main reason city government is ineffective, proponents of this choice argue, is that city workers and managers are judged primarily on how they cater to certain politically influential people, not on how well they deliver services to the city as a whole.

Similarly, political leaders tend to be judged not on how their actions affect the overall good of Philadelphia, but on how well they intervene with the city bureaucracy on behalf of special interests. This misguided job description discourages good people from running for city offices, in this view.

The solution, in this view, is twofold. First, the job of political leaders should be to lead, to set broad policies and goals, not to micromanage city agencies to suit political interests or to act as a glorified gofer for constituents with a gripe about the city bureaucracy.

Second, the city bureaucracy should be reinvented as a business-like organization, managed professionally and focused on efficient customer service – with the customer identified as all residents, not just the politically connected.

• Hire managers of city agencies based on their professional qualifications, not their political ties.

• Create clear, real measurements of quality service, and hold managers accountable for meeting them – rewarding them, through competitive pay and bonuses, when they do.

• Give professional managers the tools to motivate workers and to hold them accountable for performance, free from political interference. Maintain civil service rules that insulate agencies from politics, but loosen them where they stand in the way of hiring the best people and disciplining poor workers.

• Eliminate or loosen residency rules wherever needed to ensure a qualified pool of applicants for city jobs.

• Eliminate district seats on city council; elect all council people at large. Make it the council member’s job to enact broad policies for a better city, not to intervene with city departments.

• Use the budgeting process to reward agencies that are efficient, rather than agencies that find a way to spend all their money.

• Coordinate city service areas to avoid confusion between departments.

• Take advantage of technology to cut costs and improve services.

• Revise the City Charter to give the mayor more power to reorganize city departments to eliminate duplicated effort and increase efficiency.

• Place a "sunset review" provision on any new city office or agency created by a mayor or City Council.

• Explore opportunities to save money and enhance service by contracting out some city functions, while giving city workers who now perform the tasks the chance to compete for the contracts.

• Create a new partnership with municipal labor unions that seeks more worker input in return for accountability for the quality of services.

• Eliminate the need for citizens to have political clout to obtain good service. Make sure no person has an advantage or disadvantage receiving appropriate services because of class, ethnic group or party.

• Make it easier for citizens to interact directly with city departments and agencies, in person or via phone or e-mail. Create and advertise a citizen’s handbook for how to access city services

• For the amount of taxes they pay, Philadelphia residents shouldn’t have to be politically connected, or to be stubborn pests, to receive good service from city departments.

• A city such as Philadelphia needs elected leaders willing and free to concentrate on vision and leadership, rather than addressing constituent complaints about potholes.

• Political interference with the operation of city services leads to misdirected priorities, duplication of effort and corruption. It discourages good people from working for the city. With more professional management and better worker input, City Hall’s resources would be enough to provide quality services.

• Workers hired through patronage are unaccountable.

• The City Charter was passed in 1951, a different time and a different set of circumstances, and has never been significantly revised. It needs to be rewritten to allow those who run the city flexibility to do it efficiently.

• Contracting out saves money, and inspires other city agencies to be more efficient and customer-focused.

• A little extra pay to attract good workers from outside the city pays dividends in quality and efficiency.

• Insulating bureaucrats from elected officials makes them less accountable to the public, not more.

• Inefficiency is just a symptom of city government’s deeper illness. City Hall tries to do too many things no government can do well. Try as it might to be efficient, it can’t provide most services as competently as private enterprise.

• Harping on inefficiency at City Hall clouds the deeper issue, which is that federal, state and suburban governments do not give Philadelphia the help they should in meeting its real needs.

• Making political noise is the only way some minority groups can get a fair crack at city services.

• The city is best served by loyal Philadelphians, not careerists loyal only to their paycheck.

• The cult of efficiency ignores the genuine needs of workers and poor citizens.

It is antiunion and, under the guise of fairness, favors the affluent.