View source for Observations of Poor Governance

This page explains how examples of poor governance are acquired and lays the foundation for how these observations will be presented in as a case for action, supporting the introduction of a bill before the Arizona Legislature for improving governance within Arizona Counties.

=== Assessment of County Governance ===
This website is performing an external assessment of governance effectiveness within Arizona counties, focusing on Maricopa County, which is the most populated county within Arizona. As stated on the Home Page, words are being chosen for use on this website, so they accurately reflect the topic or situation. For as hard as we try to remain neutral, we may slip here and there. Let's begin the journey be understanding the concept behind this assessment, what it is and what it isn't. 

Two words require immediate explanation, which are ''Assessment'' and ''Governance''. 

==== Assessment ====
Merriam-Webster definition is as follows:<blockquote>Assessment - the action or an instance of making a judgment about something ''':''' the act of assessing something ''':''' appraisal.</blockquote>Let's compare Assessment to other types of judgements. First, lets look at our judicial system and make a simplistic comparison of Criminal and Civil judgements.

* Criminal judgments require extraordinarily high levels of accuracy. The evidence presented must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Doubt in the accuracy of the incriminating evidence therefore becomes legitimate defense strategy. In these cases, a government entity is the plaintiff. 
* Judgements in civil trials are a little more forgiving. Guilt can be determined on a preponderance of evidence. In other words, the amount of and quality of evidence determines the outcome. Civil judgements seek resolution between two parties. The plaintiff may be a nongovernment entity. 

These judicial examples were used so that you may understand how organizations may be judged differently, considering the type of judgement sought, rules of engagement and availability of evidence. Internal Audits and Oversight seeks to judge, appraise or assess the effectiveness of an organizational entity, which is the same objective as our external assessment. However, internal audits and oversight entities are generally given greater access to the data used to make judgements, since there is a common interest to make organizational improvements based on the results. Unfortunately, External Assessments do not typically have free access to internal documents and cannot make direct observations. Therefore, the quality of data is diminished. 

* Internal Audits and Oversight - has greater access to the data and the results may be more favorably accepted given the shared goal of organizational improvements via the audit or oversight activity.
* External Assessment - has less access to the data and the assessment outcomes tend to be less welcomed because the outsider's perspective and outside priorities don't always align with the entity being assessed. 

As used in this website, we are conducting an external assessment. Therefore, this assessment is conducted based on limited documentation, which consists of 1) records delivered in response to my Public Records Request (PRR) and 2) documented from MC employees and legal team, explaining why the requested records could not be delivered. Some data used in this assessment was acquired from conversations with MC employees. I understand how the County may disagree with the content of my conversations with Maricopa County employees. Interestingly enough, MC complaints about the use of their verbal comments would not be necessary if their was a formal complaint process, which is advocated for on this website.

==== Governance ====