Is contracting out in new york city tinkering or reinventing government?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JOPP-04-01-2004-B004 |
| Date | 01 March 2004 |
| Pages | 67-83 |
| Published date | 01 March 2004 |
| Author | Ronald W. Blendermann,Rita Ormsby,John Sharp,Edward A. Zimmerman |
| Subject Matter | Public policy & environmental management,Politics,Public adminstration & management,Government,Economics,Public Finance/economics,Texation/public revenue |
JOURNAL OF PUBLIC PROCUREMENT, VOLUME 4, ISSUE 1, 67-83 2004
IS CONTRACTING OUT IN NEW YORK CITY TINKERING OR
REINVENTING GOVERNMENT?1
Ronald W. Blendermann, Rita Ormsby,
John Sharp and Edward A. Zimmerman*
ABSTRACT. This article examines whether contracting out of government
services in New York City has been tinkering or reinventing government, with a
detailed examination of the layers of approval now required for awarding
contracts to safeguard against possible corruption. The use of Compstat, by the
New York Police Department, is seen to be a reinvention of how crime is fought
in the city.
INTRODUCTION
Is contracting out in New York City (the “City”) merely tinkering?
In the following examination, we offer limited but specific examples to
support our conclusion that contracting out in New York City has been
mostly tinkering, not reinventing government. However, tinkering has
resulted in changes that have reinvented the fight against crime in the
City. Since the accountability standards used for this fight have been
adopted by other city agencies, one may argue that this has the promise
of reinventing government.
To begin our discussion, some definitions of terms are necessary.
According to Merriam Webster’s 1994 Collegiate Dictionary, tinkering
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* Ronald W. Blendermann, MPA, CPPO, is Assistant Commissioner, Agency
Chief Contracting Officer, New York City Department of Sanitation. Rita
Ormsby, MPA, MLS, is an Assistant Professor and Information Services
Librarian at the William and Anita Newman Library, Baruch College. John
Sharp, MPA, is an international security consultant specializing in supply chain
security and an adjunct professor of Criminal Justice at Pace University, New
York. Edward A. Zimmerman, MPA, is the Director of Finance, Yeshiva of
Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York
Copyright © 2004 by PrAcademics Press
68 BLENDERMANN, ORMSBY, SHARP & ZIMMERMAN
is defined as “to repair, adjust, or work, with something in an unskilled
or experimental manner.” “Reinventing” was chosen for the first word in
the title of Osborne’s and Gaebler’s 1992 book, Reinventing
Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public
Sector to convey a sense of dramatic change, not just tinkering (Nathan,
1995, p. 213). Basically, the “Reinventing Government” movement of
the past 20 years has attempted to meet the challenge of government
working better and costing less by changing the culture of government
and its processes by decentralizing authority, flattening organizational
structures, increasing employees’ involvement in and control of their
workplaces, and focusing more on the needs of their customers, their
citizens, by improving both the timeliness and the quality of response
(Kamensky, REGO, 1996). Noting that governments constantly change,
Osborne and Gaebler (1992) suggested ten principles for entrepreneurial
governments to meet the opportunities and problems of a “postindustrial,
knowledge-based global economy,” a detailed discussion of which is
beyond the scope of this paper. According to then Vice President Al
Gore, the twin missions of the National Performance Review, to make
the federal government work better and cost less, were not solely about
cutting spending, but were also about closing the trust deficit: proving to
people that their tax dollars would be respected (National Performance
Review, 1993, p. i).
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Beginning in the late 1800s, with an attack on the political spoils
system and patronage jobs, through the rise of the civil service system,
and the progressive era of the 1930s, there have been efforts focused on
how to transform and improve the efficiency function of local
government. A basic level of mistrust of local public officials exists, in
part, an enduring reaction to New York Mayor John Lindsay’s failure to
have Queens streets timely cleared after a major 1969 snowstorm (Hicks,
1994); the separate scandals of Vice President Spiro Agnew and
President Richard Nixon in the early 1970s in which both resigned in
disgrace; and New York City’s fiscal crisis later in the same decade.
These events, and others, have resulted today in a “panoptic vision”
dominating government’s need to control corruption (Anechiarico &
Jacobs, 1996, pp. 23, 28). In 1978, the Federal Inspectors General Act
(Public Law 95-452) broadened the definition of corruption to include
incompetence, indifference, negligence, and non-feasance, in addition to
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