Low-Tech Rules in the Age of High-Tech Tools
Now that it’s joined the age of computers and portable phones, our local government still has to figure out how to control the costs of the technological revolution.
Cellular phones are an example. Last week, Times reporter Jeff Brazil revealed about $3 million in bills from 3,400 Los Angeles city- and county-owned cellular phones in the last fiscal year.
City and county cell phone bills here--averaging $242,000 a month--are much higher than in other cities. In New York, where fewer people are given phones, the cost is $108,000 a month for 1,100 phones. Chicago and Cook County’s 635 phones’ monthly cost was $42,700.
Most distressing was the lack of oversight. One L.A. city cell phone accumulated average monthly charges of $746 but officials didn’t know until Thursday who had possession of the instrument. (For the record, it was Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas.) Nor could they tell you who had more than 150 other city cellular phones that had accumulated charges.
While the cell phone issue involves a technical issue, it can also be viewed as a metaphor for why local government has trouble controlling spending. It shows that while mayors, county supervisors and City Council members can talk economy and efficiency, the unwieldy power structure of local government makes it hard to cut fat.
The county Department of Health Services illustrates the point.
More than 300 employees have cell phones, and the bill adds up to tens of thousands of dollars a month. “I think there’s a lack of monitoring,” said department spokeswoman Toby Staheli. “Somebody fell down on the job.”
That laxness extends to other areas of a sprawling department that has grown up helter-skelter, desperately trying to meet the health needs of a growing population of poor people depending on public medical care. The department runs health clinics and county hospitals that provide care for hundreds of thousands of impoverished, uninsured people and operates trauma centers for the severely injured.
Under the county system, each of the five supervisors has the final say about the facilities in their districts. Real reform in troubled and inefficient Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in South-Central Los Angeles can’t take place without the assent of the supervisor, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke. The aging, decaying Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center won’t be modernized unless Supervisor Gloria Molina agrees to the plan.
No wonder this antiquated system, where powerful legislators also act as administrators, can’t deal with new technology. It’s as though NASA couldn’t make changes in the space shuttle facilities at Edwards Air Force Base without permission of the local congressman.
Under a more workable way of doing business, the department head should have the authority to root out inefficiencies--whether in the arena of patient care or cell phones--and discipline the offenders.
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But the past health department director, Bob Gates, was mercilessly battered by supervisors whom he vainly tried to appease. He finally quit, exhausted and ineffective. A new director has been hired, but he will face the same structural problems when he shows up for his first day on the job Tuesday.
At Los Angeles City Hall, the system is more centralized, but still inefficient.
Cellular phone tabs from various departments until recently were billed to the huge Department of General Services, which was created years ago in an efficiency move. But it takes months for phone users to get copies of their bills, thus complicating any efforts to root out personal calls and get reimbursement.
And nobody supervises cell phone use. There are no guidelines. Spending varies wildly from Councilman Richard Alatorre’s $693 monthly average to Councilman Hal Bernson’s $58.
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There’s nothing wrong with government officials using cell phones.
Business and government run on speedy and constant communications these days, with computer networks and other new ways of keeping in touch. The cell phone is an important part of the process.
It’s easy to laugh at the cell phone addicts who use the instrument as a power symbol. The sound of their cell phones disturbs the tranquillity of many a golf course and fine restaurant.
And we all panic at the sight of a cell phone user deep into conversation while trying to navigate a tricky freeway interchange.
But cell phone use is growing, and the trend will accelerate when even handier models come into use. “It’s a way of staying in touch, of being in two places at once,” said USC professor David Stewart, who has studied the subject.
In the Southland, with its long commutes, “you are actually getting an hour and a half more of productive time,” he said. In many cases, he said, working in an office, with its overhead, is unproductive. “Firms with a sales force should give them a computer and cell phone and do away with the office,” he said.
But in the midst of this revolution, L.A. government operates in a manner best suited to the typewriters and filing cabinets of the ‘50s. Unless that changes, expect more of these abuses in the future.
