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Special study on capital project prioritization criteria
August 24, 2011
This special study assessed the feasibility of developing countywide criteria for prioritizing capital improvement projects to better align agency decisions with countywide goals. It determined developing countywide criteria is feasible, providing draft criteria for further refinement. While feasible, it concluded implementing a countywide process for prioritizing capital projects would increase the demand on limited council and agency resources already working on other, more essential, efforts to improve the management of King County's capital improvement program.
The Auditor has followed up on the report to evaluate implementation of our recommendation. See the most updated information below.
Of the one recommendation:
| DONE | 0 | Recommendations have been fully implemented. Auditor will no longer monitor. |
|---|---|---|
| PROGRESS | 0 | Recommendation is in progress or partially implemented. Auditor will continue to monitor. |
| OPEN | 0 | Recommendations remain unresolved. Auditor will continue to monitor. |
| CLOSED | 1 | Recommendation is no longer applicable. Auditor will no longer monitor. |
Summary
The County Council requested that we identify potential countywide criteria for prioritizing capital projects. Such criteria could be useful for evaluating projects for funding during the annual budget process, while recognizing the unique characteristics of each project and differences in funding sources.
Information available to the County Council and to the public regarding how capital projects are prioritized by individual agencies is limited. There is no countywide summary of capital improvement program priorities. While we located a list of criteria considered by each agency, we found limited information on how these criteria are used to inform which projects are included in capital budget requests. We did not find information on why certain projects move forward to a budget request while others do not. This makes it difficult to monitor agency progress meeting their capital program goals.
The County Executive should explore ways to improve the transparency of agency capital project priorities.
Reports related to this study
Currently, there are no related reports to this study.
Audit team
Tom Wood and Tina Rogers conducted this audit. If you have any questions or would like more information, please call the King County Auditor's Office at 206-477-1033 or contact us by email KCAO@kingcounty.gov.