Part 2: SomerStat and ResiStat

By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

Mayor Joseph Curtatone flatly states that during his administration, “Somerville residents have seen their government become more open, more accountable and more participatory.” Implementation of the SomerStat and ResiStat programs are key elements that he cites to support this claim.

Based on all the evidence that I’ve seen, Somerville government has become less open, less accountable, and less participatory. If Mayor Curtatone sincerely believes his statement, and I think that he does, how can we explain this conflict in perceptions?

One explanation is that we have fundamentally different understandings of what openness, accountability, participation, and most importantly, “their government” mean.

It is important that government do things right. It is even more important that government do the right things.

Doing things right is operations management. It involves the effective and efficient delivery of city services. It creates performance metrics, collects and analyzes data to measure them, uses those analyses to evaluate government operations, and makes appropriate operational changes.

Doing the right things is policy making. It involves deciding what services will be delivered in pursuit of what larger goals, who will be prioritized to receive those services, the larger goals’ relative priorities, how they mutually strengthen or weaken each other, and what vision for the future of our city they serve. Policy-making involves the allocation of power.

For example, efficient operations management promptly and effortlessly issues building permits, determines whether variances to zoning codes are approved or rejected, ensures the effective provision of information and guidance by planning staff and building inspectors. Policy-making decides whether zoning emphasizes new commercial development, creating more tax revenues than municipal costs, or residential development that does the reverse and adds to the burden on property tax payers; where in the city those different uses will be located; under what circumstances exceptions will be made; who will make those exceptions, and how they will decide. In this example, recurring patterns of violation, avoidance, and compromise of zoning regulations by city officials constitute implicit policy choices.

The routinization of relatively cheap digital technology has made possible SomerStat -improved operations management through the regular collection of data that measure needs for and delivery of city services. One wonders whether, when electricity came to Somerville, the sitting mayor took credit for wiring City Hall. And never mentioned is the fact that Mayor Dorothy Kelly Gay had gone to Baltimore to investigate this system, had proposed it to the Board of Aldermen, of which Joe Curtatone was a member, and was rejected. Nevertheless, Mayor Curtatone did adopt digital technology to improve operations management, and that is a good thing. But it is the policy-making function of government where openness, accountability, and participation matter most.

The ResiStat program conducts meetings within neighborhoods and among demographic groups. ‚ÄúResidents get to share their feedback, concerns, issues, and ideas with the City‚Ķ. Residents get to request City information and data, and hear about City programs, policies, and initiatives‚Ķ. Residents get to talk to and listen to each other‚Ķand learn about how their key issues are similar to and different from each other’s.‚Äù

Reasonable observers may conclude that city government is more ‚Äúopen‚Äù and ‚Äúaccountable‚Äù because more data on operations are available to the public, even though information that indicts city government’s conduct is withheld, as it generally has been in prior administrations.

And ResiStat could support more open, accountable, and participatory policy-making. But it does not. Somerstat collects and ResiStat presents a grab bag of those operations data that are easiest to measure, like the number of potholes filled and trees planted. ResiStat participants do not receive the information that they care most about or that challenges existing policies while inspiring and informing new ones. ResiStat is a little like the drunk who looks for his lost wallet under the street lamp, because the light is better there.

ResiStat attendees are told that the city filled 63 potholes. OK, compared to what? Is the street grid currently under repair the best way to meet our transportation needs? Are development decisions increasing already burdensome traffic that raises maintenance costs borne by public citizens while delivering economic benefits to private developers? Is the sharp increase in parking fees and tickets showing meaningful improvement in parking conditions? If not, why were there 18 parking enforcement
officers on the street when the mayor was elected and 32 today? Or is the parking pogrom an unstated policy to raise city revenue in order to compensate for much hyped, but thus far, failed, economic development policy? These are policy questions.

ResiStat participants tell me that the heartfelt concerns they do express don’t seem to be taken seriously. Attendees at Davis Square, for example, devoted a significant portion of the meeting to discussing reductions in human services spending. Yet this discussion did not appear in the minutes. Whether or not one thinks that increased spending is a good idea, not reporting it undermines openness, accountability, and participation.

To support open, accountable, and participatory policy making, SomerStat would have to ask different and more difficult questions than it does. Even if it did, how could ResiStat conceivably enable Somerville citizens to effectively participate in policy making, in the context of Somerville’s current governmental structure and political culture. A majority of their aldermanic representatives has abdicated its policy making function. The Boards and Commissions that exist to review and discuss policy implementation and recommend changes are underpopulated, rarely meet or take minutes, and are largely ignored. I am at a loss to think of a single policy initiative, as opposed to operations management improvement, that has come out of ResiStat. Perhaps more informed readers can point one out.

In practice, ResiStat’s primary function appears to be public relations. It justifies political decisions, either retroactively or prospectively.

When candidate Curtatone was seeking his current job, he vowed to “give the taxpayer more bang for their buck” and to “start by eliminating public relations and marketing funds.” Once elected, Mayor Curtatone tripled the number of “public information officers.” Local papers were inundated by a perpetual blizzard of press releases. They dutifully published pictures from photo ops staged by PR staff on an almost weekly basis.

Interestingly, if you go to the Communications section of the city budget, you’ll find program activity listings for ‚ÄúIssuing Press Releases,‚Äù ‚ÄúOrganizing Press Events,‚Äù ‚ÄúBuilding Relationships with Local Newspaper Op/Ed Blogs,‚Äù and so on. But you will not find public information officers’ salaries listed or figured into the budget. It would appear that their salaries are hidden in the budget that is funded with fees that cable companies pay to the city, and does not appear in the municipal budget. Call me cynical, but this doesn’t seem very open or accountable.

As for assessing the mayor’s promise to give the taxpayers more bang for the buck, we might start with his own office. He increased his salary by $45,000, his administrative assistants’ by $12,000, and he added a third administrative assistant, in addition to the two administrative aides and two administrative assistants that he already had.

So the Curtatone administration has demonstrated unusual effectiveness in public relations. But participatory policy-making is another matter. The administration’s policy-making process seems to be to DECIDE what it wants to do in advance, ELICIT public comment, ANNOUNCE what it had already decided, and then DEFEND the decision, or D.E.A.D. for short.