Shakespeare’s classic question, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…”, shines light on the significance of a name. It leads us to ponder the potency of a name when we hear about an ineffective San Francisco program that is called “One Stop.”
Maybe this juggernaut like name was given to the workforce development program in hopes of breaking the city’s history of bureaucratic, convoluted endeavors. In essence, the program’s name, One Stop, conveys the antithesis of its actual nature (disorganized, unaccountable, and wasteful). It’s anything but a sweet-smelling rose for taxpayers.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle (August 3, 2007), “A city audit has found that San Francisco is spending at least $29 million a year on employment programs while placing a disappointingly low number of people into jobs and without knowing whether the jobs they are receiving are permanent or temporary.” The audit describes the workforce development system as “‘fragmented, with inconsistent planning and coordination of resources and inadequate monitoring of programs to ensure that the programs’ goals and outcomes are achieved.’”
Again, contradictory to its name, the program is “spread across 11 city departments” and “lacks even a consistent definition of what workforce development means…” The decentralized nature of this program makes it impossible to track if a person has made one or several, for that matter, stops for help. A city supervisor revealed “the $29 million the budget analyst said is spent on the programs is actually a low-end estimate…” and added that the amount “could be as high as $60 million because the money is spread over so much bureaucracy.”
The figures reflect the disorder: “13,157 clients received a range of services in 2006-07 – from casual discussion to intensive job assistance – but only 2,256 people found jobs, according to the audit.” Sadly, “[j]ob placement for people 25 and younger had the worst performance, with 140 youths and young adults finding jobs out of 3,412 who sought services through [One Stop].” There is no way of knowing if success is “to be or not to be” for those helped since “the city does not track whether the employment is long-term or just for a few days.”
As this program is currently being run, there could be hundreds of stops in bureaucracy in coming years. “The audit found that 32 community based organizations receive about half the overall funding for workforce development.” All records in regards to the program are questionable at this point; the supervisor who called for the audit offered the description that “[i]t’s a classic left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing….”
Another feel-good idea has managed to suck millions of dollars into the black hole of bureaucratic spending with little documentation and dubiously low success rates. Overzealous bureaucracy is making it easy for programs like One Stop to fall under the radar and unapologetically waste millions of taxpayers’ dollars. These types of programs need to be streamlined and held responsible for their actions. Residents of San Francisco, and throughout California, need to call for “Taming of the Spending.”
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