Pecking Order at Elk Grove City Hall - A Hierarchy of Consultants
https://www.elkgrovenews.net/2016/03/pecking-order-at-elk-grove-city-hall.html
By Michael Monasky | March 24, 2016
If I think
about it long enough, I conclude that our society is a hierarchy of
consultants. Spouses consult with each other to figure out budgets and
child-rearing strategies. Business firms gather managers and supervisors to
determine work flow. Governments are no different.
In
government, it's not always apparent who's in charge. Surely, the mayor calls
the meeting to order, making certain the agenda is followed. The councilmen
hear testimony from the public and then vote on ordinances, plans, and budgets
proposed by the staff. What's really behind the decision making process isn't
always apparent, however.
The city of
Elk Grove hires contract personnel such as the planning staff from Michael
Baker International, aka Pacific Municipal Consultants. The city has no
planning department, and no planning director. If anyone questions the city's
planning strategy, they must go through the city manager's office. There is no
direct responsibility of the planning agents, PMC/Michael Baker, to the general
public. Good luck with that neutral handling of the General Plan Update.
The modern,
scientific method requires the use of peer review as a check and balance to
the publication of studies and opinions
in various academic disciplines. This regimen is tossed out in the realm of
local politics. When (not if) the city of Elk Grove contracts with a consultant
to measure voter interest in a survey of higher tax rates, the contractor may
(and does) declare his work product proprietary (read: private property paid
for with public money). This means the consultant's work is unchallenged for
its declared margin of error, its detailed methodology, and the very data
points upon which it depends for its conclusions.
That
happened recently with Godbe Consulting, a subsidiary partner of Lew Edwards,
for which it was paid $47,000; Lew Edwards has been awarded an additional
$70,000 to continue its work towards convincing us, via slick mail brochures
and media advertising, that a sales tax hike is a good idea. Another $121,000
is available to the partners if they further convince the council to continue
funding this schema.
It happened
again at Wednesday night's city council meeting. Economic and Planning
Specialists (EPS) made numbers for Darrell Doan, the city's economic
development director, that painted a rosy picture of the city's employment
status; that the city's jobs to housing ratio is improving; that good paying
jobs are multiplying in this suburb; that sprawl isn't as bad as it seems; that
the numbers in his report were better than the spotty, random data from the US
Census Bureau; all for $12,000.
EPS
statistician/economist Ellen Martin regrettably reported to me after the
council meeting that her work product at EPS was unavailable for peer review by
the public. That's because the information that EPS unearthed came from Dun & Bradstreet, the
175 year old white-shoe, one-of-a-kind credit/marketing firm that created the
NETS Database used in the study. She could tell me, but then she'd have to
kill me. As with the tax survey, the jobs report had no challenge to the
declared margin of error, no detailed methodology, and no data points.
There are
US Census employees who refute Doan's allegation that its data are spotty and
random. Andrew Hait, an econometric statistician for the bureau, recently told
a workshop audience at the Sacramento Area Council Of Governments (SACOG) that
data, from business-economic surveys with a less than 70-percent response rate, are
routinely rejected. He said the US Census business-economic data are remarkably
reliable, as the bureau guarantees anonymity to firms. Data collected at the
Zip Code level are sometimes withheld and aggregated at the county level to ensure
such anonymity. And, the information from the US Census Bureau is...free.
If I think
about it long enough...well, I just get a damn headache.
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