CALIFORNIA PERFORMANCE REVIEW DELIVERS REPORT TO GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER; POSSIBLE SAVINGS TO STATE IN THE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS

Sacramento—A promise made, a promise kept. That’s what happened today when the California Performance Review officially delivered its massive government reform plan to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“We are facing some monumental problems in the state—no surprise there,” said Chon Gutierrez, the Co-Executive Director of the California Performance Review. “But the consequences of not doing something now to mend the structural disrepair in California government are frightening. As the Governor said, we can’t wait any longer for the next guys to come along and fix this stuff,” he said. “We are the next guys. We were directed to get after the problems and come up with innovative, common sense solutions, and that’s what we did. In effect, the four-month process amounted to just about the world’s largest brainstorm.”

The Performance Review got underway in February, when 275 state employees and volunteers came together in fourteen teams to analyze virtually every program and process in almost every state department and agency in California. Team members were selected from some 3,000 applicants who wanted to be part of an historic opportunity to actually have a part in getting California state government back on track.

The Performance Review was developed using five guiding principles:

• Put people first;
• Save taxpayer dollars;
• Be accountable and efficient;
• Be visionary and innovative; and
• Be productive and performance-driven.

Billy Hamilton, the Texas Deputy Comptroller, an expert in state and national performance reviews and Co-Executive Director of the California Performance Review, said, “This has been an amazing process. The CPR people have literally combed the world looking for good ideas for the Governor. With this sort of energy and brains, California is well on its way to being the standard all other governments will copy.”

The Performance Review points out that California is now facing a human capital crisis. That’s because some 70,000 state employees are due to retire in the next five years, or an astounding 34 percent of the state workforce, the majority of which are senior level management. How to replace and retrain to maintain vital customer service? CPR team members tore this enormous problem apart and advanced some common-sense, workable solutions such as suggesting that each state agency and department immediately develop strategic plans with an eye toward improving technology, business operations and hiring a replacement workforce dedicated to customer service. The Performance Review also proposed consolidating and eliminating more than 1,000 classifications that contain no actual employees and 37 percent of the classifications that contain no more than five employees.

The concept of customer service resonates throughout the CPR report, which also recommends state government start looking at citizens as consumers of its services—and calls for the creation of a new classification of state worker—that of Customer Service Representative. CPR suggested state government benchmark the best customer service practices in the private sector and establish similar standards for all state departments. The payoff for the state is better trained employees who feel they are stakeholders in producing better, smarter and more cost-conscious government.

Serving Californians as customers also means using tax dollars wisely. One of the main roles of CPR was to identify many common-sense cost efficient strategies for state government, including:

• Implementation of consolidated purchasing strategies for the whole state. The report identifies savings in the tens of millions of dollars.
• Starting to use “smart card” technology for Medi-Cal customers and low-income women who use Women and Infant Children (WIC) services. Doing so could eliminate fraud and huge amounts of paperwork—and dollars.
• Implementation of registration and licensing “kiosks” to handle DMV transactions so customers don’t have to visit an office. CPR also proposed that DMV implement biennial vehicle registration as well—which would also reduce foot traffic in offices. Customer service in offices would be greatly enhanced.
• Increasing college and university non-resident tuition; non-resident students will have to pay a national market rate for a top-notch education.
• Joining a multi-state lottery such as Powerball. State law should be changed to pay out more in prizes, re-offer “banked” games, and sell scratcher games with more popular themes. Education would get more money.

Co-Executive Directors Gutierrez and Hamilton estimate that if the entire CPR plan was implemented, the total savings to California could “…well run into the billions.”

Team members sifted through more than 2,300 suggestions from citizens, government experts, state employees and elected officials. All of the suggestions were organized into 500 issues and then broken down further into the fourteen subject areas.

The recommendations of the California Performance Review will be available to all Californians on the Internet. All Californians are encouraged to visit cpr.ca.gov and read for themselves how California’s government can be reinvented into the first true state government of the 21st Century.


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