June 11, 2008
County Council calls for clear reports on County’s performance
Annual scorecard and “State of the County” report to be published online
Citizens will have clear and understandable information on how well their County government is performing and how their tax dollars are spent, under new performance management reports called for this week by the Metropolitan King County Council.
“My goal has always been to make government more accessible, accountable and understandable,” said Councilmember
Jane Hague, prime sponsor of the legislation. “Citizens should be able to find performance and financial data on their County with a few keystrokes on their computer or a quick phone call.”
“Finding basic budget and performance information about King County government now requires wading through a large volume of user-unfriendly documents,” said Councilmember
Larry Phillips. “This action will make performance information easily available to the public so they can monitor the value they’re getting for their tax dollars.”
Performance, financial and budget information on King County is now reported in separate documents that are primarily presented as internal documents for use by County decision-makers and managers as well as external auditors. The motion adopted by the Council on June 9 calls for synthesizing that information into a summary document that will clearly show how well County government is operating and how tax dollars are spent.
The legislation calls on the Executive to prepare a format for two County reports:
• An annual “King County scorecard”—a short, visual report presenting the priorities of King County government and answering the question: “Are we as county residents better off today than we were last year?”
• An annual “State of King County” government report —a report to the public with more detailed performance, financial and budget information than in the scorecard. This report will include:
o Budgeted and actual revenues for County government as a whole, as well as broken down by the general fund and by major revenue source;
o Budgeted and actual expenditures for County government as a whole, as well as by the general fund, program area, separately-elected agency, and by executive department, division and appropriation unit;
o Community and performance measures for the county as a whole, by program area, by elected agency, executive department and division.
Both reports will be made available online.
The formats for these reports will be presented for Council consideration by July 1, 2008.
