BY RACHEL CHEESEMAN

SALEM- The Committee on Performance Excellence hopes to help the Oregon government do more with less. The committee was created by Senate Bill 1099, which passed with strong support from both sides of the aisle.

“We’re looking at the new normal, and the new normal is we expect to have less, certainly not more, revenue in the future,” said Sen. Frank Morse, R-Albany.

The committee is composed of seven members. Fred King, a public member, chairs the committee. The committee is composed of seven members: two union representatives, two legislators, two public members, a judicial representative and an executive representative.

Due to the current budget situation, the committee’s work is unfunded, and all members now serve as volunteers.

Morse drafted SB 1099. He and Rep. Chuck Riley, D-Hillsboro, serve as the legislative representatives.

King said the idea behind the committee was to “get Oregon performing at a very high level” in everything from leadership to performance to results while also maintaining a high level of transparency.

Morse said that working at this level and having some of these measures would help the state better prepare for financial crises like the current one by doing more with less money.

“There are pockets within government today where they’re looking at their processes and looking at lean management,” he said. “What we’re lacking is a comprehensive approach to it.”

Larry Williams, vice-chair of the committee and representative of the SEIU, the state employees union, said another goal of the committee was to change the legislative budget process from the current agency-by-agency approach to one that would focus on program areas, like teen pregnancy prevention, water cleanliness and others that have overlap in different agencies.

“Often, program areas cross over agency boundaries,” Williams said. “What we’d like to see is for the legislature to bring together everyone that’s in a program area, rather than piecemeal-ing it.”

The committee also hopes to see someone act as a Chief Performance Officer who would, in King’s words, work to ensure that the agencies are effectively and efficiently completing the tasks that have been assigned to them.

Other goals include developing recognition systems, organizing forums for agencies to share best practices and supporting and/or funding agencies’ training efforts.

Williams said that when budgets are tight, training programs are often some of the first to be cut, which can hurt agencies in the long run.

“You lose a lot in terms of providing service,” he said. “It’s not just about cost. It’s about providing meaningful service.”

These goals will have to be advanced primarily by the executive branch to prevent the legislature overstepping its power. Morse said he sees the work of the committee as providing a template for the executive branch to allow it to “pick up and seriously address the issue of performance excellence.”

“I think there’s plenty of opportunity to take resources within the governor’s office and redirect them,” Morse said. “Whoever is governor will have to make those decisions.”

BY SARAH ROSS

SALEM- Protesters gathered at the State Capitol Thursday, the final day for Americans to file their taxes, speaking to principals of less government spending and lower taxes.

The group was estimated by the gathering’s organizers, Freedomworks, to be at about 1,500 people throughout the day.

The main theme throughout the event was a call to action and education for participants in the movement known commonly as the Tea Party. Speakers presented their perspectives on issues of climate change, land use, immigration, taxes, and education among others.

A counter- protest drew less than a dozen students from nearby universities to show their opposing views.

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BY JACOB SZETO

PORTLAND - It has been a tight race between the two largest employment sectors over the last year in Oregon, but the “trade, transportation and utilities” sector continues to beat out the government sector by a narrow margin.

A table from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the government employed 299,000 Oregonians in February. The “trade, transportation and utilities” sector employed 311,700 Oregonians, 12,700 more than the government. That is a 4.25 percent difference, a decline from February of last year, when the difference was 6.32 percent. In terms of total employment, “trade, transportation and utilities” employed about 0.80 percent more than the government.

Oregon isn’t alone when it comes to government being one of the largest employment sectors. Montana’s government sector claimed the number one spot in January 2010. In fact, in 17 states, government was the largest employment sector this February.

The margins didn’t used to be so tight. In 2006 and 2007, the difference between the “trade, transportation andutilities” and government employment sectors was 17 percent. In 2008 it dropped by five percentage points to 12 percent. Since 2008, the margin has continued to shrink, now standing at a difference of 4.25 percent.

See sector by state 2009 table

See sector by state annual table

BY JACOB SZETO

In an effort to meet requirements for a transparency website created by House Bill 2500, the Department of Administrative Services has compiled and made available state workers’ salaries.

The data provided includes approximately 32,620 state workers’ salaries. Not included are employees of the Oregon University System, Oregon State Treasurer, and semi-independent agencies, temporary employees, or records protected by the courts.

Of the top three individual earners, the top two are from the Department of Human Services. Both DHS workers are classified as Principle Executives and earn $242,004 and $231,996. The third top earner, from the Department of Corrections, is classified as a Clinical Director and earns $229,332.

Workers who earn $100,000 or above total 949, those earning at least $75,000 total 3,477. The mean salary for all 32,620 state workers is $51,442. The mean for all Oregon workers, public and private, is $41,430, as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The state workers’ mean salary exceeds Oregon’s mean salary by $10,000, or 24 percent.

The top-earning agency is the Legislative Revenue Office, with an average salary of just under $100,000. The Legislative Fiscal Office and the Employment Relations Board followed closely, with an average salary of approximately $95,000. Comparatively, the Legislative Assembly earns the least with an average salary of $33,783.

The top two service-type category earners are Agency Heads and Executive Services, with mean incomes of $115,778 and $93,622, respectively. Employees unrepresented by a union earn $44,530 on average. Union-represented employees earn $47,277, six percent more than their unrepresented counterparts.

As for total agency payroll, the Department of Human Services eclipses all others. DHS has a head count of 8,923 and total payroll of $426 million. The runner-up is the Department of Corrections, with a head count of 4,161 and total payroll of $222 million. Following closely in third place is the Department of Transportation, with a head count of 4,236 and total payroll of $219 million.

BY JACOB SZETO

A recent report by the Oregon Secretary of State Audit Division questions the efficiency of state cell phone use. Of $3.1 million charged to the state for cell phones, the report found $588,000 of waste during a one-year period for unused and overused cell phones.

According to the report, “Charges did not appear consistent with efficient business….[I]mproved practices would result in cost savings.”

Included in the audit data were all state agencies, state boards and commissions, public universities, OHSU and the SAIF Corporation. The Department of Administrative Services (DAS) has contracted AT&T, Sprint and Verizon as cell phone vendors for these agencies. For the purpose of identifying problem areas and recommendations the audit reviewed three agencies in detail: the Department of Human Services (DHS), the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and the Department of Corrections (DOC.)

Of the $318,000, DHS accounted for 28 percent or $88,000, and ODOT $36,000 or 11 percent.

It is important to note that this analysis was only performed for AT&T and Sprint and did not represent the full cost of unused cell phones. If the third vendor, Verizon, were included in the analysis, the waste would be even higher.

This analysis was conducted solely on AT&T. With the inclusion of the other two vendors in the overage analysis, the amount of waste surely would increase.

DHS was again the largest perpetrator of wasted taxpayer money with $89,000, or 33 percent of the overage charges; and ODOT was a distant second with $17,000, or 6.3 percent.

Assuming that each vendor contract had similar patterns in both unused cell phones and overage charges, total government waste on cell phones could be around $1.3 million. Numerous examples of obvious and neglectful cell phone mismanagement are cited in the report. Take for example a DHS worker who had a flat rate plan costing $9.99 per month and 11 cents a minute. This worker used an average of 1,400 minutes costing $180 a month. That’s an 80 percent premium over AT&T’s consumer unlimited talk plan at a cost of $100.

Another DHS mismanagement example was a cell phone with $2,300 in charges in just one year. In one month alone charges reached $1,200. This is a huge red flag. To top it off, the user of this phone had already terminated employment with DHS before the charges were made!

The report found that a lack of oversight was the cause of the wasted taxpayer money. There was an absence of adequate review of high use and low use cell phone reports by DHS and DOC. When discussing the agency review practices of utilization reports, the audit report states, “Our analysis indicated that, with the exception of ODOT, a sufficient review did not occur.” These reports are readily available and part of the DAS contract with all three vendors. Had these reports been effectively reviewed, inefficiencies could have been identified, and waste could have been avoided.

In addition to the lack of review, it was found that the agencies were failing to follow state rules. Inventory tracking as required by the state was incomplete or nonexistent for all three agencies.

“We found that none of three agencies had an accurate cell phone inventory.”

These agencies failed to track cell phones assigned to employees as evidenced by the examples of missing cell phones. Although DHS and ODOT have forms to track cell phone assignments, they were not being used consistently. DHS could only produce 4 of the 42 requested forms for the audit and ODOT 14 of 29.

Responses to the audit can be found in the back of the audit report. All three agencies have agreed with the findings and have either completed or begun recommendations. We must applaud the Audit Division for their excellent work and the positive response from ODOT, DHS and DOC. Although this may seem like good government at work, we must not forget that these three agencies only represent 38 percent of the state’s charges for AT&T and Sprint, and that compliance to audit recommendations is voluntary for all state agencies.

The question taxpayers must ask themselves is: If something as simple as cell phone bills can be mismanaged, where else is money being wasted?