Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene

That leaves the nation with nine new governors, all of whom will have assumed their new jobs by January 18. They include Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, Katie Hobbs of Arizona; Josh Green of Hawaii, Wes Moore of Maryland, Maura Healey of Massachusetts, Jim Pillen of Nebraska, Joe Lombardo of Nevada, Tina Kotek of Oregon, and Joshua Shapiro of Pennsylvania.

But as football great Rocky Bleier once said, “Preconceived ideas can sometimes become barriers.”  That’s been the unfortunate case with portions of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program that was passed in 1996 with the intent of overhauling welfare through very flexible block grants to the states. A preconceived idea that there was one be-all end-all performance measurement has thwarted some of the elements in the program’s original vision.

In fact, over the decades of observing the ebb and flow of management efforts in state and local governments, we’ve seen that often the ethos of an organization is just as important as the statutes it puts on the books.

A few months ago, we wrote a piece for Route Fifty about the use of algorithms in state and local governments. As we read through a number of articles about the issues surrounding the use of these devices, we discovered repeated instances in which the word “algorithm,” was preceded by the words, “black box.”

There may be cases in which best practices can apply from city to city and state to state. Best budgeting practices, for example – such as those developed by the Government Finance Officers Association – can certainly be useful. It’s a universally accepted best practice in budgeting, for example, that entities should cover current year expenditures with current year revenues -- not revenues borrowed from the future.

Who can argue with that?

Just weeks ago, under the sponsorship of Kronos, a report titled The Great Overtime Dilemma, was published, which we researched and wrote. We retained editorial control over the report.

A significant exception has been in Tennessee, which started aggressive telework policies several years ago. (This, of course, hasn’t included certain jobs, like correctional officers, where it is truly impossible to effectively break up an inmate altercation from a home office).