Thom Reilly

Children in Foster Care: Possible factors affecting permanency planning

This is a study of Children in Foster Care to determine possible factors affecting permanency planning. Several issues were determined to be of importance, cultural diversity, economics, and family support services. Areas needing additional study were determined to be the different treatment given to African-American and poor children, and the influence of economic and social problems on placement needs and planning.

Public Sector Compensation in Local Governments An Analysis

The purpose of this study was to examine local government compensation practices across the United States and to explore possible correlations of these practices to service delivery. One hundred twenty of the largest cities and counties responded to a mail survey, for a response rate of 40%. The data suggest a large percentage (86%) of local governments faced financial difficulties in the form of a budget shortfall since 2000. In response to these shortfalls, local governments were more likely to reduce their workforce, reduce or eliminate services, and/or raise taxes or user fees rather than scale back wages and benefits. Because of this reaction, more than one half of the respondents experienced a decrease in full-time equivalent employment per 1,000 residents. Collective bargaining status, geographical region, and type of government (county or city) were found to be significant factors in determining compensation practices. Implications for practice and policy are advanced.

Comparing Public-Versus-Private Sector Pay and Benefits: Examining Lifetime Compensation

The large unfunded liabilities surrounding public pensions in the United States will ensure the issue of comparable pay between the public and private sectors remains in the forefront of public policy debates. Disagreements on pay and total compensation comparison studies vary due to different approaches, methods and data. In an effort to add to the literature on comparative compensation, a public-versus-private sector compensation model was constructed to gauge the cost of lifetime compensation. This analysis considers three types of workers within two different occupations classifications: a private sector employee with a traditional 401(k) retirement package offering, a public sector employee who has a defined benefit plan with social security income, and a public sector worker with no social security income. The two sample occupations reviewed as part of this analysis focus on administrative assistants (blue-collar workers) and engineers (white-collar employees) to provide alternatives for evaluation purposes. For the two occupation scenarios analyzed, total compensation of public employees is higher than that of an average private sector employee. When the total compensation is based on years worked, the divide between the public and private sectors increases significantly. In light of this analysis, several important public policy issues are advanced.

Budget Shortfalls, Employee Compensation, and Collective Bargaining in Local Governments:

The purpose of this study was to examine how local governments are responding to budget shortfalls and to explore how compensation practices across the United States are correlated to changes in service delivery. One hundred thirty-four of the largest cities and counties responded to a mail survey, for a response rate of 45 percent. A large percentage (95 percent) of local governments reported experiencing budget shortfalls. In response, local governments are reducing their workforces, laying employees off and/or utilizing reserves rather than raising taxes and/or scaling back wages and benefits. Type of government (county or city) and collective bargaining were associated with budget shortfalls. Despite the fiscal distress of governments, average cost of living increases were between 2 and 3 percent for each of the two years surveyed and nearly half of respondents reported increases in employee benefits (fewer than 10 percent reported any decreases). Collective bargaining was significantly associated with higher increases in benefits, increased cost-of-living adjustments, and responses to budget shortfalls.

Reforming Public Pay and Benefits

State and local governments are grappling with huge unfunded liability costs centered on public sector pensions and other postretirement benefits (OPEBs). Payments to cover these liabilities are crowding out revenues for essential public services. The policies and practices that determine public sector pay and benefits have become a significant part of the national conversation in the United States and Europe. This article provides commentary and a summary of a book addressing this topic: Rethinking Public Sector Compensation: What Ever Happened To The Public Interest? Recent national reforms on public pay and benefits are documented as well as the subsequent legal challenges that have emerged in several jurisdictions. The article conclusion is that it is imperative that these unfunded liabilities be addressed in a timely, comprehensive and fair manner, and that public sector compensation must be sustainable and reflect the reality of a new emerging workforce. However, the outcome from current litigation in several states will either significantly expand or restrict the ability to manage these public retirement plans.

Are Social Enterprises Viable Models for Funding Nonprofits

The Great Recession and its aftermath have forced nonprofits to seek out new and different ways to address their challenges. In order to make change that is sustainable and scalable, additional funding sources need to be considered to help nonprofits achieve their core missions. Charity and government support remain crucial but are insufficient to address the magnitude of the task at hand. Solving basic social problems requires a level of sustainable investment that donors and government cannot provide alone. Social enterprise models may well offer an answer. Nonprofit organizations are vital to the nation’s economic well-being and have nearly doubled in the last 30 years (National Center for Charitable Statistics, 2015). More than a million tax-exempt organizations exist in the United States, including public charities, private foundations, and civic organizations—not counting the 220,000 religious congregations that are also registered. However, the traditional reliance of nonprofits on governmental and charitable funding is increasingly unsustainable. Shrinking government budgets and greater competition for ever-fewer dollars are reducing the scale and effectiveness of nonprofits in meeting the nation’s growing challenges and intractable problems. It may be time to rethink how these important social organizations are funded. Should nonprofits become more aggressive in adopting new business models that can add needed revenue? Could this ease nonprofits’ dependence on government and charity and better position them to fulfill their missions? What are the downsides and dangers in pursuing new models? One answer to these questions may be the social enterprise model, which has the potential to revolutionize both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. Social enterprises are for-profit or nonprofit businesses whose products and services address major unmet needs of society. Social enterprise efforts can range from selling merchandise to support the charitable functions of the nonprofit to creating a new entity that merges the forand nonprofit operations into a hybrid form. These social enterprise efforts can add a business model by creating sustainable revenue. The core mission is thereby freed from total dependence upon the decisions of donors. Interest in exploring these models has been rising in the United States, but they are much more common in Europe. The first social enterprise model was documented there in 1990 (Defourny, Hulgård, & Pestoff, 2014). The journal Impresa Sociale (Social Enterprise) presents new entrepreneurial initiatives that arose largely in response to social needs that had been inadequately met—or not met at all—by nonprofits and public services. These initiatives were credited with influencing the Italian parliament in 1991 to create specific legal forms or “social cooperatives.” (Defourny et al., 2014). As these forms spread to other European countries, researchers began to study their effectiveness (Defourny et al., 2014). Eventually, nonprofit and for-profit sectors in the United States began to adopt some of the concepts from the social enterprise and social entrepreneurship movement (Defourny et al., 2014). Social entrepreneurs argue that they can be change agents in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors (Praszkier & Nowak, 2011). In contrast to traditional approaches, they are able to recognize and pursue new opportunities to meet socially impactful missions, while implementing funding strategies that ensure that their work has the resources needed to be effective (Praszkier & Nowak, 2011).

Local Government Sick-Leave Practices An Exploratory Study

The purpose of this study was to examine paid sick leave (PSL) practices among large municipal governments in the United States. Results of a national survey suggest that over 90% of these governments offer PSL. Few reported making any post-recession changes, and in fact, most governments continue to allow employees to rollover unused sick leave from year to year, cash out unused sick leave upon termination, and/or include unused sick leave in pension calculations despite the sometimes significant cost of such policies. Documentation is required in 70% of governments, but formal auditing of PSL occurs in less than one third of responding governments. Type of government, employee classification (e.g., public safety vs. general staff), collective bargaining, and whether the government requires public hearings for public employee benefit changes were significant factors in determining certain PSL practices.

Compensation Benchmarking Practices in Large U.S. Local Governments: Results of a National Survey

Growing competition over human capital has reiterated the importance of strategic practices to maintaining a high-quality public sector workforce. But how often does the public sector study pay and benefits among competitive peers? This study presents the findings of a national survey of human resource professionals regarding compensation benchmarking practices. Just over half of respondents indicated they conducted a benchmarking study within the last decade. A majority said their jurisdiction only compares compensation with other public employers, with a smaller number including both public and private competitors. Salaries were the most frequent topic of concern; fringe benefits and paid leave time were less often compared. Several jurisdictions conducted benchmarking studies for purposes other than compensation; about one quarter gathered data for purely informational purposes and 9% carried out a study in anticipation of labor negotiations. A series of best practices for benchmarking studies is offered in conclusion.

Predictors of Death and Survival Duration Among a Sample of Persons Living With HIV/AIDS

A follow-up study was conducted on a sample of 120 ethnically diverse HIV-positive men and women first interviewed in 2000. Participant survival and death rates were ascertained from death records and analyses were performed to identify demographic and psychosocial predictors of survival from the original data. Consistent with past studies, factors associated with survival were age, CD4 count, years HIV positive, and lower alcohol use. Two analyses identified use of professional counseling as a unique factor associated with reduced risk of death. Contrary to our hypotheses, the results from these analyses did not suggest that social groups with fewer economic and institutional resources or those with limited access to highly active retroviral therapy (HAART) therapies were at reduced risk of survival.

Union Business Leave Practices in Large U.S. Municipalities: An Exploratory Study

This article examines union business leave (UBL) or official time practices among the 77 largest municipalities in the United States. Specifically, it evaluates UBL practices as articulated in 231 collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) of police, firefighter, and nonsafety public employee unions. Results indicate that UBL is prevalent as 72% of unions receive some kind of UBL, most frequently paid leave financed by the city or through cost-sharing arrangements. Empirical findings suggest these practices are driven by political factors, and that resource constraints or the state or regional-level environment are nonsignificant. The article discusses these results and offers a series of policy recommendations.