Panel says more communication between state agencies needed

In the organization of state government, most lines of communication stretch down vertically through departments from the governor's office.

The Missouri State Government Review Commission wants to cross those lines with 11 committees made up of high-level officials who will meet regularly on issues of common interest. Called "interdepartmental coordinating councils" in the commission's report, they would be responsible for crafting integrated answers to those issues.

The councils would focus on areas from job development and children's health to details of the state employee merit system and efficient use of government labs. The councils would use existing staff and resources, requiring no additional spending, the commission said in its report.

Commission co-chairman Warren Erdman, vice president of the Kansas City Southern railroad, said the councils are designed to break down barriers between agencies. Agencies promoting job development, for example, often don't have enough communication with regulatory or service agencies, he said.

"We found that there are many critical missions that the people of Missouri rely on state government to deliver that require cooperation between three or more departments," Erdman said. "We were finding that the missions were compromised when department walls went up."

The councils make up 11 of the 84 recommendations from the commission. While many of the proposals require legislative action to change law or the state constitution, the councils can be implemented with an order from the governor.

In fact, one such group was established in September, when Gov. Matt Blunt ordered creation of a panel to watch over programs that help released prisoners returning to society.

Of the approximately 40,000 inmates in Missouri prisons, 98 percent will be released at some point, said John Fougere, spokesman for the Department of Corrections. And if past trends hold, about 39 percent will return to a cell for new crimes, he said.

The "interagency steering team" Blunt established for prisoner re-entry culminated an in-depth study of the problems faced by returning prisoners, Fougere said. Led by the corrections department, the panel includes representatives of the mental health, social services, education, economic development, revenue and health and senior services departments.

"There are numerous problems these people face that are barriers to them establishing a law-abiding life," Fougere said. "We want to address these with the other agencies through a cooperative effort."

Four of the councils would address the inner workings of government. The areas those panels would address include efficiently using state laboratories, upgrading computer systems, studying which functions could be done efficiently under contract with private companies and improving the merit system for state workers.

And while some of the coordinating councils need to be permanent oversight bodies, the ones looking at interior workings of government should have a limited life span, Erdman said.

"We need a review of the merit system, which we found was a very, very high necessity," Erdman said. "We need to know how it works for employee career opportunity and how it doesn't work."

The coordinating council should "reform it and go out of existence," he said.

Exploring how to use private contractors is vital to the state saving money, said Mike Keathley, commissioner of administration. For example, he said, the state recently turned maintenance of state office buildings in St. Louis and Springfield over to private contractors.

"We didn't have a critical mass of buildings there that are state owned to justify a whole separate maintenance staff," Keathley said. In Jefferson City, on the other hand, the state has offices in about 40 buildings and using state employees makes sense, he said.

The Office of Administration provides services to all state agencies. Several steps to save money taken in the past year include combining the maintenance staff of the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations into the general maintenance pool and taking over the Department of Economic Development's car fleet.

Both steps allows the state to eliminate management jobs without reducing service, Keathley said.

More recently, he said, his agency has been looking at how to handle mail service for state agencies. "There are a shocking number of people who are involved with just moving mail around here," he said.

An interdepartmental group looking for additional savings would add momentum to such efforts, Keathley said.

"We need an overarching vision," he said. "What is it that government itself needs to be providing? Does government exist to provide janitorial and maintenance services? We need to do it only if it provides a cost benefit."

The difficulties with the state merit system involve how to move employees from one job to another smoothly. For example, Keathley said, the state recently closed a prison in Cole County. Under the merit system, it was difficult to get those people placed quickly into other corrections jobs.

"It should have been a snap of the finger to do it, but it was hell getting it straightened out," he said.

Proposals for the interdepartmental councils drew praise from state Sen. Jason Crowell, R-Cape Girardeau. The state is the largest employer in Missouri, Crowell noted, and upgrading state systems needs constant attention.

"It is long overdue that we give people the freedom to just talk to each other," Crowell said. "Tasking them with the responsibility to talk with one another seems like common sense. I don't know if we are doing it very effectively in the system we have."

Along with the governor, the only other place where the needs and duties of all state agencies meet is in the legislature. And while lawmakers have several committees dedicated to year-round review of state functions, such as the Joint Committee on Corrections, it can't serve as the coordinating body for services, Erdman said.

"When it comes to setting policy, the legislature is the board of directors," Erdman said. "In terms of implementing and executing daily duties, that is at the department level."

The coordinating councils are among the most important recommendations of the review commission, Erdman said. Focus on these 11 essential areas that cut across departmental lines improves decisions and cuts down on bureaucratic delays, he said.

"Of the 84 recommendations, these are the ones that could be done the most immediately and see the most immediate result," Erdman said. "We are not proposing any new entities or new people, just getting them on the same page."

rkeller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126