Efficiency at your service

22 December 2004

Want a big, new idea for Mayor Thomas Menino's fourth term?

Let's annex Brookline. Close by, nearly encircled by Allston and Jamaica Plain, the little burg has a great tax base, good schools and better T service than almost any other Boston neighborhood. Sure, its citizens turned down the idea back in 1873 and have never looked back, but why not give it a shot?

I mention the idea to Menino and he gives me a withering look, one that speaks to grave doubts about my mental capacity.

OK, then. Let's remake Boston's city government.

That's Sam Tyler's idea. Tyler, the long-time head of the respected Boston Municipal Research Bureau, is pushing for the city to adopt an innovation called "competitive service delivery." Not only would it save the city money and improve services, it might even make for a happier work force. The problem is that resistance to change - from the city's bureaucracy, its unions and its pols - is high.

Part of the reason for that is history. For many unions, CSD looks like nothing more than privatization dressed up. Privatization - contracting out the jobs of public employees to private-sector firms - is popular in conservative circles but from labor's perspective often seems like union busting. Moreover, much of the cost savings achieved through privatization, unions argue, occur because private-sector workers simply are paid less.

In Tyler's conception, however, CSD's goal is less to privatize than it is to introduce competition. And rather than leaving public unions out in the cold, oftentimes they end up winning bids to provide services - and their members sometimes end up making more, not less.

To make CSD work, Boston would first need to adopt something called activity-based accounting - a budget strategy that tries to figure out precisely how much it costs the city to deliver a particular service (how many workers does it take to change a street light bulb?). Right now, the city does it only fitfully, if at all. Armed with that information, Tyler would envision City Hall managers sitting down with union reps and identifying particular areas where it might make sense competitively to bid out the service. Tyler uses the Yellow Pages test - if there are private firms out there doing much the same thing (such as vehicle maintenance or janitorial services), competitive bidding probably is warranted.

Both private firms and the city unions could bid. The competition would be less over wages - in fact, Boston's living wage rules and other protections could make salary cuts off-limits - than it would be in figuring new and more efficient ways to deliver the same service.

For cash-strapped cities - and Boston certainly is one - CSD efficiencies would be welcome. On top of that, CSD could change the city's relationship with its workers. Rather than managers simply telling labor what to do, unions get a seat at the table, in effect creating their own strategies for getting a job done. Oftentimes as well, a portion of the savings realized can go directly to employees as an incentive.

CSD may sound a bit utopian, but many cities, notably Baltimore and Phoenix, have done it successfully. Menino is interested but wary. Noting he once pushed a version of CSD while a city councilor, he figures that the initial reaction from unions would be negative. "Any time someone proposes a change, people resist," he says.

Perhaps. Tyler has found some union leaders intrigued with his proposal. And as Menino knows well, adopting something as potentially significant as CSD will require that he lead the charge. "In order to be successful, CSD must be a top priority of the mayor," the Research Bureau stresses. Otherwise it will just remain one of those nice ideas that lie on the shelf, dusty and unused - like annexing Brookline.