THE COUNCIL ON MUNICIPAL PERFORMANCE
The Council on Municipal Performance (COMP) was created in New York City in 1973 to pursue the idea of rating cities and other units of governments with the idea of identifying the best and worst performance and then studying the reasons for success or relative failure.
The Council applied the concept to City Crime, City Housing, The Wealth of Cities (City Economies), City Budgets, City Air Quality, City Transportation and School Health Services.
At local level, it conducted comparative reports on community boards within New York City, advocating coterminality. It studied relative crime rates (and a single police precinct) and sanitation cleanliness rates.
The lack of common standards brought the Council to study government accounting methods and it made a number of recommendations to the Government Accounting Standards Board. It produced a guide to auditing for local government officials.
The Council also turned its attention to municipal finance. It produced a series of reports on municipal securities regulation and a guide to municipal officials selling their bonds.
On a statewide basis throughout New York State, it compared levels of services in selected counties that agreed to cooperate, with the idea of creating benchmarks for future study.
The research led to public-private service comparisons, and the Council published a newsletter, the "Privatization Report" for several years. The Council conducted a study of the use of private delivery of public services in Japan. The Council compared the management of the contracting process in different municipalities. This research led to recommendations and a handbook on privatization in local government, "Contracting Municipal Services."
In 1987 the Council merged with the National Municipal League, which in 1988 became the National Civic League. Its activites became part of the program of the new entity, which left New York City for Denver.