Government can work: the Santa Monica story.

QUICK--NAME A MAJOR SUCCESS THE federal government has enjoyed in the last 30 years. Public school reform? No. The wildly popular War on Drugs? Not exactly. Health care Rural electrification and the interstate highway system? OK. You got us there.

Still, with all of Washington's much-publicized failures, it is easy to see why conservatives' government-bashing strikes a chord with so many Americans. In a recent survey conducted for the Council for Excellence in Government, 42 percent of surveyants could not offer a single important success of the U.S. government in the last three decades. And with the daily news reports of government corruption, incompetence, and waste run amok, why wouldn't Jane Q. Public entertain fantasies of ousting the bureaucrats and turning D.C. into a giant Disney theme park?

But it has long been the mission of this magazine to show that government can work. And when it does work, the onus is on all of us to highlight the successes and see what lessons can be applied to other areas. Of course, government's grand, far-reaching achievements are the most memorable, whether they be the accomplishments of the Peace Corps and NASA in the 1960s, or the military's 1990s performance in the Persian Gulf. It is just as vital, however, to recognize government's more pedestrian, yet equally important, small successes, like the Food and Drug Administration's handling of public comments on proposed tobacco regulations (see sidebar), or the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA's) response to the Midwestern floods of 1993. After all, it is on the domestic front, with the not-so-glamorous projects, that bureaucratic lethargy most often threatens to sabotage action.

An example of government at its best--which occurred, ironically, just as anti-government sentiment was paving the way for the Republican Revolution--could be seen in the aftermath of the 1994 earthquake in southern California. At 4:31 a.m. on January 17, the Northridge quake rippled through the Los Angeles area, shaking down houses and office buildings, injuring more than 1,500 people, and disrupting power and water service to tens of thousands of residents. But, this being California, the most newsworthy aspect of the damage was the collapse of the stretch of 1-10 known as the Santa Monica Freeway.

Anyone who's ever experienced rush hour in L.A. knows the going is tough under the best of circumstances. The Santa Monica Freeway is the nation's busiest highway, carrying well over 300,000 vehicles each day. Traffic crawls and blood boils, turning commuting into the vehicular equivalent of roller derby. When the 6.8 magnitude Northridge quake exploded concrete columns supporting two of the freeway's bridges, the resulting effect on traffic could in itself have been designated a major disaster. Commuters had to be diverted onto alternate highways and surface streets; truckers had to follow long and costly detours. The governor's office estimated that each day the freeway was closed cost the local economy more than $1 million in lost production and wages.

According to the state transportation department, CalTrans, a reconstruction project of this size normally requires two years to complete--one year for design planning and award of contracts, and one for actual construction. But Los Angeles is car dependent, and the closure of a major freeway for more than a few months had the potential for a backlash that would make the city's 1992 riots look like a junior-high pep rally. As an added impetus, this high-profile federal-state partnership affected the politically key, voter-rich state of California. Neither President Clinton nor California Gov. Pete Wilson (who was up for re-election that year) could afford to have it fail. With the entire nation watching, both state and federal governments went into no-bullshit mode. Clinton declared Los Angeles a disaster area (something many of us had suspected all along) and targeted freeway reconstruction as a top priority. Transportation Secretary Federico Pena called for slashing bureaucratic red tape to push through emergency repair funds (the DOT awarded $45 million the first week and another $50 million the following week), and outlined a variety of innovative contracting techniques to speed reconstruction.

It was certainly in the state's interest to expedite repairs. In addition to the project being under intense public scrutiny--nothing generates interest in California like its roadways--cost was a major concern. The federal government was responsible for picking up 100 percent of construction expenses incurred within six months of the quake; beyond that, the state had responsibility for 20 percent of the bill. After intense consultation, officials from the Federal Highway Administration and from CalTrans pledged to reopen the Santa Monica Freeway within six months.

Forget bureaucratic procedure. Wilson issued an emergency declaration, allowing the normally interminable contract approval process to be scrapped. Within 12 hours of the quake, Pena approved nearly $4 million in demolition contracts, and the clearing of debris from the roadways began that same day. For the major construction projects, CalTrans compiled a short list of contractors with freeway construction experience and gave them five days to bid on the project. (Normally, open bidding allows all interested contractors six to eight weeks to respond to an official Request for Proposal) The contractors assumed a substantial amount of risk in submitting bids, because they were working with incomplete construction plans. (Instead of being allotted the usual 6 to 8 weeks at the onset of a project, the freeway's detailed construction planning took place concurrent with construction) This risk, coupled with the accelerated schedule set by the Federal Highway Administration and CalTrans, called for establishing serious financial incentives to win contractors' interest.

For reconstruction, state and federal officials decided that time would equal money--literally. Contract awards were determined using an incentive-based formula known as A&B contracting. Contractors submitted bids based on projected construction costs, "A," and the estimated number of days, "B," they would need to reopen the road. (The state set a ceiling of 140 days) Each day of "B" was valued at $200,000, the estimated direct cost to the public of having the highway closed. The bidder with the lowest total costs (A&B) won the contract. The contractor's guaranteed payment, however, was only for the "A" amount. Then, for every day the firm came in early on its time estimate, it was to receive $200,000. For every day it went over, it had to pay $200,000.

Contract approval took one day, as opposed to the typical 30 to 60. The winning firm was northern California-based C.C. Myers, which pledged to complete the project in the allotted 140 days. In fact, the company reopened the freeway in just 66 days, earning an additional $14 million in incentive pay on top of the $14.9 million it had bid in construction costs. To achieve this miracle, contractor Clint Myers radically expanded his workforce, hiring more than 200 carpenters (65 is average for such a project) and 134 iron workers (the average: 15). Myers's employees and subcontractors worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless of the weather.

Far from resenting the project's demands, workers were happy to take home paychecks fat with overtime bonuses. And, perhaps just as importantly, the people involved understood that they were working toward a common goal, laboring to achieve something for the community. Says CalTrans spokesman Jim Drago, "It's the classic model that, when the community bands together...great things can happen."

Of course, no project is perfect--particularly one operating under such a tight deadline. In Santa Monica's case, the freeway's carpool lane was omitted from the redesign, and minor seismic retrofitting had to be done on the bridge columns after the road was reopened. Project planners, however, did not use time concerns as an excuse to waive standard contract regulations. The bidding process remained competitive, and the project still observed federal requirements concerning disadvantaged business participation and "buy American steel" provisions.

Although the achievements of the Santa Monica Freeway project are impressive, it shouldn't take a natural disaster to shake government from its bureaucratic complacency. Certainly, there is much to be learned from the 66-day reconstruction of a major freeway--lessons in cooperative planning, incentive programs, and effective project oversight. But when talking with state and federal officials about the experience, they fixate on the project elements that would not translate well, like the 24-hour work schedule and the sacrifice to other projects the contractor endured. "You'd burn out the construction industry if you tried to operate this way on a regular basis," says Drago.

But there is more to the Santa Monica success than grueling work schedules. (Especially when you consider that typically, a year of the project would have been eaten up with planning and contract approvals.) Much of what made it possible was that the venture was transformed from a boring infrastructure project into a point of civic pride through public attention and a sense of importance. It is, after all, human--and institutional--nature to perform at your best when there's a sense of urgency to your mission, a feeling that your work has weight and a greater purpose. (Just think about the difference in attitude and job commitment between an army private and a file clerk down at the DMM) And workers' sense of pride and purpose are driven as much by the public perception of their jobs as by any specific tasks they perform. (After all, who would argue that stuffing a basketball through a nylon net is a skill of intrinsically greater value than teaching a child to read?) In addition, public attention places pressure on government agencies--and private ones, for that matter--to perform honestly and well. One of the most dramatic turnarounds of the last decade, the rebirth of FEMA in the early '90s, was spurred by public outrage over the agency's pathetic performance following Hurricane Andrew's devastation of southern Florida in 1992. Without public heat on FEMA, Mid-westerners hit by the 1993 floods would not have received such praiseworthy assistance.

When the nation's security or welfare is on the line and the entire country is watching, bureaucrats and politicians are loathe to risk public embarrassment and outrage by dragging their feet or behaving in their own narrow self-interests. Incompetence and corruption thrive in the shadows; recognizing that they're operating in the public spotlight typically decreases people's tendency toward chicanery. It also decreases the need for time-consuming, mind-numbing bureaucratic procedures, so many of which are aimed at ensuring that activities such as contract awards and personnel hiring are handled fairly (and so many of which are easily circumvented, as evinced by the countless news stories on the cronyism that guides much of the District of Columbia's awarding of contracts and hiring of school administrators). Nothing motivates a supervisor so much as the knowledge that she will be held accountable for the quality of a job performed by her agency or department.

Focusing the public eye on the everyday workings of government would do much to increase workers' pride in their jobs and their inclination to excel. But until the people who implement policy start receiving even a fraction of the attention we give the politicians who craft it, government will most likely continue to shine only in the worst of circumstances, when called upon to clean up the devastation caused by floods, fires, or airplane crashes. Of course, citizens always run crying to their government in times of crisis. It will take our more constant attention to goad agencies into jettisoning the dead weight, rooting out the inefficiencies, and working to show the public exactly what they can accomplish.

RELATED ARTICLE: Action at the FDA 

The Food and Drug Administration recently displayed what it can accomplish when facing a clear, urgent--and publicized--mission. Not known for its expeditiousness, the FDA stunned everyone last year by speedily processing the flood of responses to a proposed ban on tobacco advertising aimed at minors. As The Washington Post detailed in its report on the review process, m just 12 months--a third of the time expected--the FDA reviewed at least 47,000 pages of comments from supporters anti opponents of the proposed regulations.

Standard legislative procedure dictates that the FDA receive public and professional input before writing new regulation; many people feared (hoped) that this review process would indefinitely delay any new rules. "FDA-watchers estimated it would take the agency three to seven years to complete the review," Philip Morris spokesman Vic than told the Post.

Sorting through the cotangents was no small task. The letters--filled with statistics, arguments on smokers' tights, death threats, and tales of personal losses from cancer--came hand-written and word-processed, in a variety of languages. All were scanned into a new computer system to help streamline the process and weed out duplicate responses.

But motivated by the power of their mission and by the knowledge that their progress was being watched by pro- and anti-tobacco interests alike. FDA bureaucrats suffered through a solid year of late nights so that the public's voice would be heard, without detailing, the agency's push for new regulations. As FDA Associate Commissioner for Strategic Initiatives Sharon Natanblut told the Post, this was the year of no sleep.