In almost every backlog, the bad economy and budget cuts have exacerbated the situation. But the worst backlogs are often years in the making, not the result of a sudden spike in demand or single budget cut. They are the result of chronic underfunding and mismanagement, sloppy hiring and training practices, obsolete technology and data management systems, and low morale tied to crushing caseloads.
Layers of bureaucratic processes often make backlogs worse. If there is a silver lining in discovering that an agency is falling terribly behind on its work, it’s that the episode often forces long-overdue conversations about how to streamline processes to force improvements. “A lot of the backlogs occur because processes have evolved and no one has ever looked at them to see if they make sense anymore,” says Joe Doyle, a Georgia public administrator who worked in statewide process improvement before moving into his current role as commissioner of the State Personnel Administration.
In Arizona, for example, child protective services officials unwinding their backlog have identified a number of steps in its processes that have no impact at all on child safety. Those steps were likely responses to problems and criticisms at different times, and eventually got in the way of the agency’s work, says Steve Meissner, director of communications for the Arizona Department of Economic Security, which houses child protective services. “A lot of procedures had been layered onto existing procedures over the years to try to deal with the criticisms that have come our way,” Meissner says.
A hard game of catch-up
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The problem with backlogs is that once they exist, they can be incredibly difficult for almost any state bureaucracy to eliminate. For the managers in charge, it can feel like digging in wet sand: No matter how hard you and your employees work, sand keeps falling back into the hole.
Getting rid of a backlog requires both keeping up with new work coming in and playing catch-up at the same time. By definition, the new work is something the agency is already struggling with — otherwise there wouldn’t be a backlog in the first place. And the catch-up work comes with a whole other set of challenges. Annoyed customers wondering about the status of their business license or tax return call for updates, or simply to complain. There’s more correspondence. More complexity. More opportunities for a name, phone number or other vital piece of information to get lost.
This is a familiar cycle to those who work at the Michigan Tax Tribunal, an administrative court that primarily hears property tax disputes. Since 2006, the court’s caseload has more than doubled. The reason for that is simple: As property values plunged in Michigan, more residents and businesses began challenging the amount of property taxes charged by local governments. Properties weren’t actually selling at prices anywhere near the values they were being assessed at, taxpayers argued. Localities, which had been hit hard by cuts to state aid, were desperate to keep as much money coming in as possible.
“It essentially overwhelmed the Tribunal at that particular point in time,” says Kimbal Smith, the court’s chairman. Suddenly, thousands of homeowners began appealing their tax assessments. Complex commercial cases came rolling in, too. According to Smith, every General Motors plant in the state was under appeal. Major commercial cases involve complicated appraisals and can take years to resolve.
The Tribunal has been spared from budget cuts, but not until recently was it allocated additional staff or resources to keep pace with its increased caseload. Smith is encouraged by support from Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s administration to allocate additional temporary staffers to usher appeals through the process. Still, as of a month ago, there were 11,903 large claims cases pending, as well as another 22,465 on the small claims docket. Many of the cases in question are old: About 7,000 of the large claims cases and 10,000 of the small claims cases date to 2010 or earlier.
For taxpayers, the Tribunal’s backlog has a very real cost: Anticipated tax refunds are taking more than 14 months to come through in residential cases. In some commercial cases, millions of dollars are at stake. The delays aren’t just a problem for the taxpayers but for struggling local governments, too: With so much of their revenue hung up in tax disputes, it’s becoming difficult for some of them to plan their own budgets.
The perils of prioritization
One way overloaded agencies try to handle backlogs is by prioritizing their work. If there’s not enough manpower to handle every case, the thinking goes, better to focus first on the ones that cost the most or leave vulnerable people at the greatest risk. The cases that would appear most scandalous if they hit the evening news.
It’s a rational response. But it can create its own problems, too. That’s because the less severe cases that get pushed aside don’t go away. They just get older, and sometimes harder to resolve.
This is a phenomenon that the Texas Board of Nursing has experienced. The board is charged with investigating consumer complaints against nurses. The allegations that come to the board are wide ranging, from nurses not documenting patient care well enough, to failing to disclose a criminal background, to sexually abusing patients.
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