PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE:  This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

The Oregon state government budget is, if nothing else, a complicated document.  I would call it opaque, not just complicated.

While some political figures laud the budget-making process as open and fair, my experience over more than 40 years is that the process is mostly unintelligible, even to a trained eye.  I contend this, not as a slight to those involved in the process – they work hard – but more as a comment on the process itself.

This became timely last week when, on December 1, Governor Kate Brown released her “Recommended Budget for the 2021-23 Biennium.”

She performed this statutory ritual on time – and she deserves credit for that because, in the past, some governors have not met the deadline.

But she and her predecessor governors could have done better.  And, so, in this blog, I’ll expand on the reforms I consider to be important as part of making the budgeting exercise more accurate and transparent. 

That’s important for all of us because, as taxpayers, the biennial blueprint is “our” budget for state government, not someone else’s.  We pay for it with our taxes.

Too often, what happens in backrooms controls the outcome in public. 

Are my ideas magic answers?  No.  The only real solution is for legislators to adopt, personally and conceptually, a more genuine process, one that does not just mimic backroom deals, as well as one that expects government programs to achieve results, not just exist from year to year.

Here, then, is summary of some reforms worth considering.

+  Brown did a good thing by producing a “current services level budget” for the new biennium.  In other words, what would it cost to maintain state government for another two years?  The budget document should not include proposals for new taxes.  To Brown’s credit, it appears at first blush that it did not.

+  The problem, however, is that a “current services level” budget, for all its worth, does not take a hard look at all government programs to verify whether they are working or not.  One of my friends, a businessman, says legislators should take a “return on investment” look at government. 

Perhaps, but, at least, if tate programs are not working, or, more specifically, not producing the results managers say will be produce, then either of two actions should occur – scrap the programs or revise them on a “results-required basis.”

Too much to ask, you say.

No.

Taxpayers deserve this kind of hard look.

+  Some good-budget advocates support what they call a “zero-based budget” approach.  Start from zero and build from there.  Makes sense, but a fallback position would be to require governors to announce recommendations for scrapping or cutting back programs that are not producing results.  Impose the new requirement in the same law that requires the basic “recommended budget.”

Doing this effectively also would require something that is not now in place – requiring state programs to project what they propose to achieve in the next two years, then holding them to those pledges. 

Call it “outcome-based budgeting.”

If the programs don’t make the targets, scrap them.

If governors performed this function, they would be doing a solid public service…yes, tough politically, but worth doing.

As an example, when I represented Youth Villages, Inc., the executive director there was incensed that state foster care organizations were not required to verify the outcomes they intended to achieve for foster care children as they competed for state contracts to care for those children.

So she authorized me to introduce a bill for Youth Villages that would solve the problem.  It would require foster care contract applicants to sign up for results before they got a contract and, then, if results were not achieved, they would lose the contract.

For Youth Villages, the point was that foster care programs exist for the benefit of the children involved.  If the children are not treated effectively, scrap the contract.

Sounds good.  And the bill passed the Legislature and was signed by the governor.  The problem?  State managers failed to implement the bill, though it was law, and they were not held to account for that failure.

One of my friends gave me an article that included this good quote:

“A 21st-century operating system (I add, for state government in Oregon) should identify the results it most wants to achieve and the strategies most likely to get there, and then rigorously establish priorities and allocate resources to achieve them.  It should co-produce the results with citizens, business, non-profits and other governments.  It needs to recruit, nurture, empower and reward entrepreneurial leaders and staff, many of whom move readily among all three sectors.  And it must relentlessly improve and innovate, continuously creating higher-value methods and activities while shedding those that deliver less value.”

Another article from the Public Affairs Strategy Group in 2009 said this:

“Bigger or smaller government is not a bad question, just not the one that most needs an answer today.  The right question:  What kind of government do we want?  It doesn’t make sense to debate bigger or smaller until we replace an obsolete way of ‘doing government’ that pretty much guarantees that government will not be as focused, effective, innovative or efficient as it should be.”

Tough to move state government here in a new, better direction when it comes to budgeting?  Yes.  But doing so is worth the time, effort and energy it involves despite entrenched obstacles.