Florida Governor-elect Rick Scott has a transition website and a webpage to collect ideas from the public to reduce Florida government costs. It is HERE at http://www.scotttransition.com/send-your-ideas/ .
Here are some ideas I submitted - I will add more as I do them.
2010-12-09 - Establishment of Independent and Elected County Auditors is Needed
Florida counties have no County level department assigned full oversight over performance areas like efficiency, economy or effectiveness. The Auditor General does superficial, low quality financial audits, and the Counties brag about "award winning" CAFR reports and financial audits, but NO ONE is assigned independent review (unlike corporations) of operational metrics, efficiency, and effectiveness to reduce measurable costs. Florida needs to establish tough, mandatory departmental performance metrics, AND establish an independently elected County Auditor like other States have with authority to initiate performance audits of County, Schools, Constitution Officers, Special Districts and Cities. (Note: Some Florida Counties have had so many problems that they established their own County Inspector General - but they are usually run by ex-law enforcement or attorneys and are focused on after the fact investigations of wrongdoing, and not reviewing and improving performance measurement systems BEFORE problems can occur.)
2010-12-09 OPPAGA Needs to be refunded and enforced
Oppaga is a program established by Gov. Jeb Bush to establish performance metrics for Florida School Districts, and they were required to fill out forms and establish action plans. But the budgets were killed for the Oppaga staff and compliance audits of the District plans a couple of years ago. I recommend the State refunds the program with tough new metrics, and go after School Districts who have ignored their earlier "plans" or falsified answers.
2010-12-09 - School District Wage Negoiations are Amateurish and not based on fact
Florida School Districts negotiate in "bargaining" sessions with union reps each year on wage increases and benefits. The Districts do not seem to have any sound, objective economic data analysis method to compare wage demands to economic indicators (like businesses do), thus unions use 3rd grade economic data and use emotional pleas to get raises approved by Board members. Florida government needs to create a professional analysis method of demographic, performance and economic data to use when evaluating wage and benefit demands from unions. From what I have seen, if that was done now, the wages and benefits should be rolled back to be in line with corporate wage patterns, unemployment figures and cost of living data. Districts that approve wages based on emotional pleas need to be "outed". ALL meetings held with the unions or where School District Board members approve wage and benefit recommendations from staff need to be public, and all supporting documents, minutes and recordings need to be posted on websites, which is not the case now.
2010-12-09 - Better School Transparency over Spending and Budgets is Needed
Florida does NOT have very good transparency regulations over how County School District funds are spent. As a consequence, many do not post detailed budgets on their websites in pdf format for public review, and they are not even required to provide printed copies in local libraries for review. Instead, they demand $100 or more for the public to get a printed copy. Many of the budget forms, including the 20 page summary form that IS required (and is on many websites) and the newspaper ad formats are NOT understandable. Texas Schools publish their entire accounts payable ledger (check ledger) on websites for public examination. Florida needs to mandate much more understandable and detailed budget and spending documents be published in pdf format on websites and also provide full printed copies in at least FIVE local libraries.
2010-12-09 Need for Revamped Florida Auditor General Dept.
I have been a corporate auditor and Certified Internal Auditor for over 20 years. I reviewed the Florida Auditor General's 3-year "operational" audit of Lake County two years ago, and it was at the 2nd grade level, and very minor. They really didn't have any idea what a high level operational audit was and didn't go after significant dollar savings. Florida doesn't even REQUIRE that school districts have an independent internal auditor of their own. A good operational auditor would have found a million dollars in savings, but they didn't even calculate the possible savings from minor audit recommendations. Florida should be embarrassed at the low quality of "performance" or "operational audits" conducted by the AG. It is at the 1950's level. You need new leaders in that agency and a more aggressive charter of responsibilities. I have worked at ARCO Oil, Nissan Motor Corp., County of Los Angeles, and on the Federal Reconstruction program in Iraq - your auditors are not working at that level. (See my blog on local Lake County fiscal fiascos and oversight at www.FiscalRangers.com ).
2010-12-09 Florida Special Districts Should ALL be Sunsetted and New Regulations be Written
Florida Special Districts are out of control and there is no standard set of regulatory requirements to ensure transparency of spending, audit trails or accountability. These districts include County Districts for Hospitals, Water Districts, Fire, etc and they are created by local laws or legislation without regard to even the basic controls and oversight methods used for State or Federal or Private Foundation grants. In Lake County, we have a North Lake County Hospital District which has REALLY VAGUE rules for defining how over $10-million in property taxes are spent. There is no requirement for separate audit trails or compliance audits (they do have standard financial audits). Even Disney's local foundation has better spending rules and accountability methods than Florida Districts. There are no mandatory sunset provisions, so some Districts like ours have gone on for 40 years, spending money without oversight or allowing the residents to vote to continue the District. Major laws are needed to define that all Districts be sunsetted within 3 years and revoted on by the public and that regulations need substantial revision to provide TOUGH accountability, audit requirements and termination dates (at least every 10 years unless approved by a new voter referendum). We established our own website for the District because their Board refused to post financial reports or minutes on a website. Florida leaders should be embarrassed at the poor regulations used to establish Districts. More details at my blog at www.FiscalRangers.com - see link for Hospital District.
2010-12-09 Prohibit unfunded mandates for School Districts and other Local agencies
Eliminate ALL mandatory State regulations and requirements for School Districts unless funding sources are provided. Mandate that NO central Federal or State agency can set mandates for County School Districts without fully funding them, AND a provision allowing the School Districts to DROP any mandate when funds are discontinued. ALSO, as part of this new regulation, mandate that each school district list ALL Federal or State mandates, and the actual cost of implementing them with funding sources so the public can see, for instance, that they have to spend FIVE times the FTE rate for disabled students as they do for normal students, or see the total costs of dealing with non-english speaking students. Use the same philosophy for other local government programs.
2010-12-09 Senior Hiring ratio should match applicant or resident demographic ratio
Modify hiring rules to mandate that hiring of seniors should match the population or applicant ratio of seniors to ratios of other age groups in State Government. If Seniors over 60 comprise 18% (estimate) of the population, and 16% of all job applicants are over 60%, then the State government and local governments should be required to interview and hire AT LEAST 16% of their staff from the Seniors group. Too many HR departments are screening out applicants over age 50 in favor of younger staff and hiring does not match job needs of seniors, which is why they become homeless. A major problem occurs when applicants over 55 lose a job, then are screened out and have no retirement or enough savings until social security kicks in. The same rule should apply to all employers in Florida including vendors and suppliers to State and local government agencies. The same rules, with transparent reporting should be applied to ALL search firms and job websites, which are now used to screen out anyone over 50. Allowing age screening is discrimination against seniors willing, able and experienced to work. These same rules should be applied to different levels of staff and management to ensure seniors with good credentials are not just hired as clerks.
2010-12-09 Consolidation of segmented County government services is needed
Local Counties have numerous duplication of functions. The County government, the School Districts, Special Districts, the courts, Constitutional Office departments and the Cities all have separate functions for fleets, facilities, IT services, purchasing systems, fire fighting services, police / sheriff dispatching, emergency operations centers, hiring, records retention, etc. It is time in this age of computers and fast transportation to consolidate all these functions at a central County level to SAVE taxpayers dollars. A plan should be established to progressively consolidate functions over a 10 year period. Corporations do it all the time, and Florida government needs to do the same. Florida government needs to establish a formal, objective, professional method to evaluate costs of decentralized vs consolidated services and mandate it as part of the function of local governments.
2010-12-09 DUMP the DROP program and change retirement eligibility of government workers to age 65
DUMP the DROP program entirely. It infuriates non-government workers that government employees can collect retirement income before age 65, but then it is worse for them to retire once as early as age 55, then continue their existing job at the same level of salary AND build another retirement account or cash payoff. Change retirement eligibility dates for government workers to match those used by 80% of local industry, such as age 65. The taxpayers should not have to pay retirement at age 55 for ANY government workers.
