“What (or whom) should we occupy?” has become shorthand for a bit of communal soul searching. We know that our economy fails to measure up. For some the pain is very personal, “Why can’t I find a job?” or “Must I work so hard for so little?” or “Why can’t employers see what I see in my daughter or my son?” Or one step removed, “What do we do about single moms stuck in a continuing cycle of poverty?”

We want answers. We blame globalization or automation or the school system. Or we blame government or regulation or some shadowy conspiracy. And we blame each other. The Occupy Wall Street movement blames the greed of the rich and powerful and their agents in government. The Tea Party movement blames the power of Big Labor—and their agents in government.

What we want changed depends on who we think is guilty. The Tea Party wants less government. The Occupy movement wants more. Read the rest of this entry »

If we could redraw the map, we would never create the patchwork quilt of local governments we have now.  That’s a familiar refrain among people who observe local government—and not just in NYS.   But the opportunity for a complete overhaul of the current – inefficient – system in many states rarely comes along.  Usually, the most that can be done is to “rearrange the furniture”.

The City and Town of Batavia, NY are an exception. They are two communities reinventing themselves.  The endeavor began in 2008 when Town and City leaders launched an exploration of service sharing options. From combining highway operations to merging the police department with the County Sheriff, the municipalities looked at feasible courses of action to save money.  By the end of the study, the idea of merging into one new city had captured their imaginations. Becoming one city presented the most opportunities to streamline the local governments, cut costs, enhance services and improve the communities’ image in the region. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, we issued a report through Govistics – a project of CGR – ranking U.S. states by average 2010 state worker salaries. New Jersey and New York topped the list, followed by California, Alaska, Maryland and Connecticut. All had average state worker earnings of over $50,000. Indiana, Missouri, West Virginia and the Dakotas rounded out the bottom of the list, with average salaries of less than $35,000. Of the six top-paying states, all but Connecticut saw an increase in state worker pay from 2009 to 2010, with New York state workers seeing a 3.4% increase in their paychecks. Of the bottom five, all but Indiana saw increases in state worker pay.

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How’d you like to be a county executive, legislator or member of a board of supervisors and have to decide the future of a financially-troubled county-owned nursing home? Often one of the area’s major institutions and employers, it provides an important community service, even though typically costing the county taxpayers significant amounts of money.  No matter what you decide, you’re likely to be criticized from one or more directions.  That is the unpleasant reality currently being faced by public officials in counties throughout all regions of New York State.

As recently as 2005, more than 40 counties outside New York City owned and operated public nursing homes containing some 9,900 beds.  Now those numbers are closer to 35 counties and 8,100 beds, and those totals are likely to dwindle further over the next few years.  Why the sharp declines in such a short period of time?  Rising costs and declining revenues combine to force county taxpayers to plug steadily-rising deficits. Read the rest of this entry »

Closing failing schools and replacing them with new–hopefully better–schools is at the heart of the Portfolio Plan strategy in place in the Rochester City School District. It sure sounds appealing, especially to those who have long felt that education is a world shielded from the consequences of failure. But does it work?

The answer is critically important, not only for the obvious reason that we all want effective schools for children, but also because closing a school necessarily means dismantling a school community. Perhaps that community was dysfunctional, unhealthy, even dangerous, but it was still the daytime home for the students and staff members in it.

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Pessimism about the economy comes easily to most of us. We’ve been told that it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown. Nonsense. Pessimism is our natural state.

And when the Rochester economy outperforms the state consistently over a three-year period, we suspect either mischief or incompetence: Someone at the Department of Labor made a mistake that will soon be discovered. Yet while the rest of the state has been shedding jobs since September 2008, we’ve pretty much held our own here in Rochester. Read the rest of this entry »

In their fourth time to the altar, the two Princeton, New Jerseys—township and borough—said “I do,” and agreed to merge. With the vote, Princeton becomes the first municipal merger in the State of New Jersey in nearly 60 years. (Well, not the only. There was the 1997 consolidation of Pahaquarry, population = 7). Unlike the three previous attempts—the latest in 1996—voters in both the Township and the Borough agreed to join their governments.

In retrospect, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised the vote passed.  These two communities already share more than a dozen critical public services, major community assets, and a history and profile recognized the world over.  Working together – indeed, working as “one” – has long been ingrained in the two communities. Read the rest of this entry »

Dirty little secret #1—When you say “We do program evaluation,” typical reactions include polite but confused nods and rolling or glazed-over eyes. Unfortunately, the real value of evaluation is often crowded out by rhetoric about investing only in “evidence-based” programs on the one hand and pressures of grant compliance on the other.

CGR’s clients operate in the real world, where program evaluation isn’t quite as pristine as it is in academia. Some of CGR’s evaluations have formal designs with control groups, sophisticated statistical analysis, and measurable “hard” outcomes. But the vast majority of evaluations are not as “pure”—and this is where the fun begins. Real programs serve real people who are affected by many things besides the program in question. They have real limited budgets, real funders funding different outcomes, real challenges getting data, and operate in real dynamic contexts. Evaluation often gets a bum rap—either it’s watered down to the point of PR or it’s done just for compliance. So what’s the point? Read the rest of this entry »

Governor Cuomo set November 14 as the deadline for the state’s ten regions to submit economic development strategies. Led by Wegmans CEO Danny Wegman and University of Rochester President Joel Seligman, many in our community are working furiously to articulate plans, goals and measurable objectives.

While we hope to be one of the winning regions—earning a promised $40 million in state support—the process itself has already been valuable. In my 20 years here, I cannot recall a time when leaders of business and government from the Finger Lakes’ nine counties have gathered to talk about what makes our economy successful and what might make it better. The process would have been even more valuable had it been less of a fire drill—a February deadline would have been better, although still ambitious—but we can be proud of the diligent efforts of the Council members and participants in eleven workgroups. The plans they have developed are a testimony to the vitality of particular economic clusters and the many vital economic institutions in the region.
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Tough times have spurred a renewed interest in collaborations among nonprofit agencies – everything from co-location to formal programmatic partnerships to organizational mergers. With fewer public dollars available to support programs, and the economic pinch slowing private contributions, it makes sense to rethink how the nonprofit sector operates.

The nonprofit sector has certainly grown in both numbers and scale over the past few decades. The National Center for Charitable Statistics reports, for example, the number of registered nonprofits in New York State nearly hit 104,000 this year, up 50% compared to the mid-1990s. The human service sector alone (excluding health care) represents over $25 billion in annual revenue in NY with nearly $40 billion in total assets.  In Rochester, Guidestar reports 245 human services agencies with income over $100,000—from Hillside Family of Agencies with revenue of $100 million to Bethany House women’s shelter with income under $130,000. Read the rest of this entry »