Question

Maricopa County’s Public Defense Services Agency (the public defender’s office) tracks performance metrics very closely. Table 9.2 is from the FY [Fiscal Year] 2014 Annual Business
Strategies: Adopted Budget document. Examine the trends and the connections between the measures and the expenditure dollars. Does the FY 2014 adopted budget seem reasonable?

						Rev vs Adopted
Measure Type	Measure Description	FY 2012 Actual	FY 2013 Revised	FY 2013 Forecast	FY2014 Adopted	Var	%
Result	Percent of Parent/Child/Case Dependency Petitions not Granted	43.2%	41.1%	43.8%	44.4%	3.3%	8.0%
Output	Number of Dependency Parent/Child/Cases Resolved	7464	7322	6434	7782	460	6.3%
Demand	Net Parent/Child/Case Dependency Assignments	11422	9488	12480	14352	4864	51.3%
Efficiency	Cost per Dependency Parent/Child/Case Resolved	$951.78	$967.88	$1,368.21	$1,471.60	-$503.72	-52.0%
Expenditure	100-General	$7,104,065.00	$7,086,827.00	$8,803,090.00	$11,451,996.00	-$4,365,169.00	-61.6%
	Total Uses	$7,104,065.00	$7,086,827.00	$8,803,090.00	$11,451,996.00	-$4,365,169.00	-61.6%

Answer 1

						Rev vs Adopted
Measure Type	Measure Description	FY 2012 Actual	FY 2013 Revised	FY 2013 Forecast	FY2014 Adopted	Var	%
Result	Percent of Parent/Child/Case Dependency Petitions not Granted	43.20%	41.10%	43.80%	44.40%	3.30%	8.00%
Output	Number of Dependency Parent/Child/Cases Resolved	7464	7322	6434	7782	460	6.30%
Demand	Net Parent/Child/Case Dependency Assignments	11422	9488	12480	14352	4864	51.30%
Efficiency	Cost per Dependency Parent/Child/Case Resolved	$951.78	$967.88	$1,368.21	$1,471.60	($503.72)	-52.00%
Expenditure	100-General	$7,104,065.00	$7,086,827.00	$8,803,090.00	$11,451,996.00	($4,365,169.00)	-61.60%
	% of cases resolved out of total assignments	$0.65	$0.77	$0.52	$0.54
	Cost per Resolved Case	$951.78	$967.88	$1,368.21	$1,471.60
	Cost per Assignment	$621.96	$746.93	$705.38	$797.94

In FY 2013 Revised - % of cases resolved out of total assignment is 77%, however FY2014 Adopted, it is taken as 54% which seem very low compared to revised forecast for FY2013. Because of lower resolved to total assignment ratio, the cost per solved case has increased by 52%. The cost per assignment is still 797.94 compared to FY013 revised of 746.93. This shows that the agency should revisit its resolved cases to assignment ratio which seem unreasonable. Although in FY2013 Forecast this ratio dropped to 52% and agency may have adopted this based on forecast for 2013. Still is way less than 2012 numbers and and FY2013 revised numbers.