How will red tape and withholding information add efficiency?

If you think cutting county red tape is easy, look how hard it is just to get ideas on how to do it.

Near the end of last week’s commission meeting, Juan Carlos Bermudez asked fellow commissioners to OK placing on a current website on efficiency a way for the public to suggest things that could help the county be more efficient and transparent.

Judging by the response, you’d have thought he was suggesting the county develop a rocket to the stars or a comprehensive end for poverty or a cure for cancer or something equally complex that couldn’t possibly be voted on right now.

In the old days, all Mr. Bermudez would have asked was that the county encourage letters in the mail that would be copied for each commissioner to learn what the public was suggesting – a suggestion box. All doing that would have required was some paper, having a clerk send out copies, and a vote of 13 commissioners to OK it.

But this is high-tech stuff that apparently is much harder to deal with than the good old US Post Office ever was in the days before emails actually existed.

Commissioners thought of every reason in the world why this suggestion needed meetings and study and the involvement of the county technology team to make it work, if it could ever be done at all.

So in the end the good suggestion of Commissioner Bermudez went the way of good suggestions from the public – off to meetings and study and oblivion.

Did I mention that the issue is efficiency?

Mr. Bermudez in fact heads a new committee, the Government Efficiency and Transparency Ad Hoc Committee, whose reason for being is to learn about how to make county hall more efficient and transparent and do something about it.

The lesson he was handed is that you’ve got to have lots of red tape to be efficient, and it’s really hard to be transparent with the public too.

Mr. Bermudez began by asking that the county create and publicize a spot on a website that Mayor Daniella Levine Cava started this year, WISE305. That site, to quote the mayor, is meant to empower “county employees to identify and eliminate outdated rules and regulations that slow down operations, ensuring that every policy, program, real estate deal, and contract delivers the highest return for taxpayers.”

It seemed like a great idea by the commissioner to piggyback on a great idea by the mayor to get feedback from not just employees but also the public to improve efficiency.

Instead, fellow commissioners took turns saying why it was hard or maybe impossible to do.

His motion asked that a link to a commission suggestion website be placed on the Mayor’s WISE305 site for at least six months.

“I believe the general public should be able to hear those comments [that the mayor gets], and it does us no good if we get comments in two different areas,” he said. That, he added, would give both the commissioners and the mayor access to the same suggestions for transparency and it “costs very little.”

Chairman Anthony Rodriguez said “I agree with the intent” but the discussion should be sent to a committee.

Commissioner Raquel Regalado said there would be “a lot of issues” because there would be a lot of public complaints to read through and a lot of information, and maybe the public should just get an email address rather than be able to use a website and see what others have said.

“Who’s going to go through it, how are they curating that and what’s going to come to us, because it can be a daunting amount of information,” Ms. Regalado added. She asked Mr. Bermudez to flesh out his idea.

Everyone on the commission would get access to all the suggestions, Mr. Bermudez added. “I don’t think it’s costly.” Hearing from residents via technology would make it simple. It would be a repository for suggestions.

Look at it more and put it on a county agenda to consider, said Commissioner Oliver Gilbert III.

“We want to create broader avenues, as many as possible,” Mr. Gilbert said, but if a suggestion site is open, people have to make sure all the feedback is reviewed and analyzed. “It’s going to cost something because one of the worst things we could do is say send us your thoughts and no one reads them.”

Maybe that’s shorthand for saying that among 13 commissioners and the mayor and their staffs nobody will look at taxpayer suggestions, which is a lot more chilling than worrying about cost.

OK, Mr. Bermudez said after the barrage of flak. “I just think that the 13 of us and the administration should have a chance to at the very least hear from the general public and the stakeholders out there.”

That leaves Mr. Bermudez to get the county attorney’s office to draft formal legislation that can be heard in committees and later heard in the commission again to find a way to have everyone hear ways to cut red tape that the commission could have avoided in a single vote last week.

What is wrong with this picture of efficiency and transparency?