Better Government

The Repair, Replacement, Renovation and Maintenance (R3M) Program concept is a strategy for managing Hillsborough County's physical assets. The purpose of the R3M Program is to protect investment in infrastructure, reduce the maintenance backlog, control and reduce costs, minimize waste, and to maintain public buildings and facilities in a safe and efficient condition.

The Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability (FERA), based in Albany, New York, has been implementing a school-choice initiative — the Albany Project — that has created high-quality charter schools to serve more than half of the local public school student population in the state's capital city. FERA believes that a district composed of choice schools can better serve students, parents, and the community than the traditional urban school district system. The Albany Project is demonstrating that the charter school model — freedom from state regulations and education bureaucracy, freedom to innovate, and increased accountability—can better serve all students, not just the small segment of the population fortunate enough to win an enrollment lottery or afford a private school.

Iowa's Charter Agencies Initiative, originally developed by the Public Strategies Group, a Minnesota-based government-consulting firm, is one in a series of programs implemented by Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack to ad-dress the ballooning state budget. The program stresses increased efficiency, reduced costs, and greater freedom for state agencies (and the Governor's office) to offer better value to Iowa's citizens.

Through its pay-for-performance program, the Dallas County (Texas) Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) has set an example for how similar agencies across the country could be reformed. MVD registers 1.9 million vehicles per year and has 140 employees at 10 sites. In March 1998, the Vehicle Registration and Title Department launched its performance pay program. The program utilizes performance measures to identify and reward quality work.

Buildings in Florida's Miami-Dade County typically fill up as quickly as they can be built. Between glimmering high-rise towers for vacationers or retirees, banks and offices that serve as the nerve centers of Miami's south-ward-looking economy, or schools and public buildings to support a growing population, South Florida has the look of a perpetual hard-hat zone. This steady pace of needed construction is maintained by an innovative building department and its Building Permitting Automation Efficiency Program.

Bid-to-Goal is a program originally developed by the City of San Diego's Metropolitan Wastewater Department (MWWD), in conjunction with consulting firm Henningson, Durham and Richardson (HDR), in 1997 as an "optimization strategy" to more cost-effectively implement large public works initiatives. By means of a binding pact between the city and public sector employees, the MWWD had hoped to create a hybrid dynamic that incorporates the most desirable features of both public and private sector contracting.

We propose to close all five Registration and Titling Bureau offices and al-low the RMV to register all motor vehicles—boats, ATVs and snowmobiles included. This consolidation would bring significant savings while actually improving service for off-road vehicle owners.

The Massachusetts Estuaries Project, through the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth School of Marine Science and Technology (SMAST), supports the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in the development and implementation of policies to protect nitrogen-sensitive coastal embayments. The Project collects data and develops models to manage and restore the 89 embayment systems that comprise the coastline of southeastern Massachusetts. The Project encompasses new technologies, regulatory approaches and funding mechanisms to reduce the costs of conducting estuarine restoration.

The Longfellow Bridge, connecting Boston and Cambridge, is in bad shape, due not only to its age and the ravages of our weather, but also to a troubling and persistent lack of maintenance. Fixing the bridge, in effect paying the bill for our unwillingness to maintain it, is estimated to cost at least $180 million, with the potential for cost overruns reaching into the hundreds of millions.

This paper offers an analysis of the relative merits of price and non-price approaches to water conservation. As economists, we emphasize the strong empirical evidence that using prices to manage water demand is more cost-effective than implementing non-price conservation programs.