Catherine M. Mater
A solution may be at hand to resolve the ongoing dispute between the Oregon Department of Transportation, Oregon legislators and members of the public. It is a dispute that culminated in the need for an ODOT audit last year.
Concerns driving the need for the audit had focused on the agency’s fiscal practices, project management performance and disconnects with the overseeing Oregon Transportation Commission. Governor Brown’s decision to retain an independent outside auditor, McKinsey and Company, was spot-on. McKinsey recently released its audit, with insights that should be taken seriously.
We now know the following:
1) ODOT excels in outreach to its Oregon stakeholders, outpacing peer agency organizations; it’s an achievement that should be acknowledged and celebrated.
2) The agency’s cost to operate is out of sync with peer agency organizations. For every dollar of revenue received by ODOT, the cost to run the agency is more than 40 percent higher than peer agencies operating at efficient levels. Information technology expenditures run 70 percent higher than they are at peer agencies (over $12,200 per employee compared to $7,000 per employee in peer agencies).
3) ODOT performance in procurement and construction/contract management needs significant improvement. Auditors ranked ODOT “worst in class” here. The audit shows that since 2008, half of ODOT’s transportation projects went over budget, with on-time completion dates falling below other peer agency performance levels.
4) ODOT’s overall footprint (facilities, transportation fleet, etc.) needs trimming. Specifically, more than 20 percent of ODOT facilities should be evaluated for consolidation opportunities, which could result in a potential taxpayer savings of $4.5 million; and the agency fleet should be reduced by more than 300 vehicles.
Auditors also detailed improvements needed within the transportation commission, such as more direct involvement in ODOT project funding decisions, performance evaluations and agency director evaluations.
This review comes at a critical time. An ODOT budget request of $5 billion is now before the Legislature and features infrastructure projects that will most certainly impact areas important to all Oregonians: public safety, human health and carbon emissions reductions. A dilemna? Not necessarily.
Despite defining critical areas for improvement within ODOT, auditors also determined agency staff at all levels to be capable and highly talented. So the capacity is within the agency to make the needed changes in a timely fashion.
With the audit report in hand, Oregon legislators should be able to tie required internal ODOT improvements to important agency allocation requests that deserve solid support this legislative session. And ODOT staff should be able to perform.
We now know what we have to do. Let’s get the job done.
Catherine M. Mater, past chair of the Oregon Transportation Commission, is a member of the Oregon Global Warming Commission. She can be reached at mater@mater.com
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