By Jack Hoffman
posted
Mar 7, 2013
Vermont political leaders are showing renewed interest in
measuring government performance. But as history has shown, the
state's bottom line isn't the most important indicator.
Twenty-five years ago, human services budget discussions focused
on caseloads:
Were they up or down? But it wasn't clear if a higher caseload
was good or bad. Was it a negative-a sign the economy was weak and
more people needed help-or a positive-an indication the state was
providing more help?
In the early 1990s, then-Human Services Secretary Con Hogan had
a radical idea: Instead of counting people served, the agency would
measure Vermonters' well-being. Were they getting healthier? Did
they have enough to eat? How many kids were graduating from high
school? Going to college? What was happening with domestic abuse?
Child abuse? Elder abuse? What about teen pregnancy?
It was an important and fundamental shift that recognized
government's role to improve Vermonters' lives, and its
responsibility to measure and be accountable for how well it did
the job. Hogan received national recognition for his work.
In the mid-2000s, in the name of efficiency and smaller
government, a new administration stopped measuring Vermonters'
well-being. In fact, it got rid of the people who collected and
analyzed the data needed for this kind of accountability. The
agency went back to counting caseloads, and once again there's
confusion about what the numbers mean.
In his 2010 Budget Address, when Vermonters were still in the
grips of the worst recession in 70 years, Gov. Jim Douglas
complained about the number of Vermonters receiving Medicaid: "Next
year, the Medicaid system alone will serve 172,000 Vermonters.
Since the beginning of the decade, overall spending for human
services has more than doubled-a growth rate of three-and-a-half
times inflation."
For Douglas, more Vermonters qualifying for Medicaid didn't
indicate their economic distress; it indicated state budget
distress. So he looked for ways to reduce Medicaid benefits and
payments to balance his budget.
Similarly, the Shumlin administration is now alarmed by the
number of Vermonters in Reach Up, the state's welfare-to-work
program. Some families have been on Reach Up for three years or
more-again in the aftermath of the worst recession in 70 years-and
the administration sees it as a sign the parents lack ambition or
initiative, not that the state needs more case managers to help
families overcome obstacles to employment. Claiming it will save
money, the administration wants time limits for Reach Up.
Gov. Peter Shumlin also has complained that the cost of Vermont's
earned income tax credit (EITC)-a tax break for workers in low-wage
jobs that don't pay enough to support a family-increased 49 percent
between 2003 and 2011. More than half of the rise was due to more
people qualifying for the EITC. The rest was due to an increase in
the amount of the average credit, which rose at about the rate of
inflation.
More EITC claimants could be a negative indicator-a sign that
the weak economy was moving Vermonters from good jobs to low-wage
jobs that qualified them for the credit. Or it could be
positive-people moving from the unemployment line into entry-level,
low-wage jobs. But neither of those causes would indicate that the
EITC was too generous, as the governor has suggested. And neither
would justify the governor's proposal to cut the EITC to pay for
his laudable initiative to increase childcare subsidies.
Both the administration and the Legislature want new government
performance indicators so taxpayers and policy makers can see
whether public funds are being spent effectively and are improving
Vermonters' well-being. It's a good idea-but only if we understand
what the indicators mean. That more Vermonters are in need of help
these days is not a sign that the state is doing too much for
them.
Jack Hoffman is a policy analyst for Public Assets Institute
(www.publicassets.org), a non-partisan, non-profit organization
based in Montpelier.
