Questions sound familiar

Here's my small piece of advice for improving state government performance:

Don't have two state agencies issue two contracts to the same researchers to ask, "How do citizens gauge the performance of state government? Which indicators make sense and are useful to citizens? Where do they suspect performance is lacking and why?" That exact wording appears in separate contracts issued by Gov. Christine Gregoire and State Auditor Brian Sonntag, each hiring pollster Stuart Elway to hold focus groups with state residents.

The work by Elway, in a joint venture with consultant Faith Trimble, is supposed to — according to both contracts — "involve bringing the current Washington 'Priorities of Government' goals and performance measures to the citizens and soliciting their feedback and validation."

When Gregoire said at a news conference Monday that she and Sonntag had both hired Elway, I said it seemed sort of redundant.

"Well, it's not," Gregoire said. Sonntag, she said, is "doing it on performance audits alone."

That's true. But only because Sonntag curtailed his outreach efforts after learning Gregoire wanted to ask some of the same questions.

Sonntag was about four months ahead in this race. He issued a contract worth up to $550,000 in February to help prepare his office for its new performance-audit responsibilities.

More recently, Gregoire has been looking for ways to get public comment on government management and accountability and to develop priorities for next year's budget.

The governor is required by a 2005 law to "seek public involvement and input on these priorities."

That doesn't require focus groups. But to their credit, Gregoire and Sonntag generally coordinate their efforts and share ideas about accountability, which Gregoire concedes "may not sound like the most intriguing idea in the world" but is what the public demands.

Sonntag said his focus-group contract will now cost "substantially less" because he will let the governor's office do the focus groups on government accountability and priorities.

He decided that after hearing from Gregoire about her plans about two weeks ago.

"I don't want to duplicate what they're doing and I don't want them to duplicate what we're doing," Sonntag said.

Now, his office will talk to state employees and focus its research on the public's expectations for performance audits. Gregoire will get input on what programs people want funded, or eliminated, and how the public would measure success.

Sonntag says he's thrilled with how it all worked out. He hasn't always had a good relationship with governors, even though they've all been fellow Democrats.

"Hey, I'm happy they want to go out and do this work," Sonntag said Thursday. "Citizens need to be involved. They need to be listened to. We don't have to be the only ones doing that. In fact, I'm glad if we're not."

David Postman is The Seattle Times' chief political reporter. His column appears Fridays. Reach him at 360-236-8267 or at dpostman@seattletimes.com