Transparency and Performance

When I entered the Legislature 8 years ago, information was hidden from voters. Though the Legislature had an advanced website, the decision was purposely made to not make Legislators’ votes readily accessible on the site. Why not? With straight faces, legislative leaders would say, because such information, taken out of context, could confuse voters.

Fortunately, we quickly changed our tune, and offered the public access to lots of information. Everything I have available – in terms of access to bills, voting records, floor and committee speeches – the public also has. I am not aware of any state doing better in terms of access, and I am aware of most states doing worse.

I believe a correlation exists between this transparency and the fact that Utah is widely recognized as the best-managed state in the Nation. Giving people direct access to information has 3 consequences. One, officials pay closer attention to their actions. Two, people can more readily hold officials accountable for their actions. And, three, officials can be bolder in their actions. The first 2 points are obvious. I’ll discuss the third point.

Transparency allows officials to be bolder, because they have a closer, more-informed relationship with constituents; and, in any event, there is no place to hide. Where good information is lacking, drivel flows back and forth between constituents and their elected officials; officials can hide behind aphorisms, and the public has a difficult time digging them out with a rehash of the week’s editorials. Available information, however, allows people to dig in more on their elected officials; likewise, it allows officials to cite to specifics in the record, to explain actions that contradict the wishes of the editorialists.

I believe we’ll see a shift in voters’ concerns, at least to some degree, away from the litmus of liberal or conservative toward a litmus of "conversative" or "non-conversative," with the conversative candidates having the advantage. Constituents don’t expect their representatives to vote like they would every time, but they do expect their representatives to dialogue with them and bring them into the process. Now, of course, this is nothing new; but, the ability of constituents and their elected officials to exchange information is accelerating at a staggering pace. And, I believe that this openness signifies great things for representative democracy.

Kory's New Blog

Rep. Kory Holdaway has started a blog!

I think I've been blogging longer than any elected official in the U.S. -- "currently-serving elected official", I should say, since Ray Cox started blogging very early. (I'd love someone to fact check that claim). And, it is always exciting for me, when an elected official is willing to expose his thinking to public scrutiny and criticism (meaning comments enabled and unmoderated). I solidly believe that such openness will produce good results.

Kory will be an excellent addition to the blogosphere. He is courageous, thoughtful, and responsible, in advocating his positions. Kory and I both have strong passions for public education, and, often, we find ourselves approaching issues from different perspectives (and with significantly different constituencies), but I have learned much from him and, invariably, I enjoy working with him.

Performance Pay Update

Districts and Charter Schools have turned in their plans to implement performance pay measures. Those proposals can be viewed here. They are all over the map – and that is a great thing! Utahns don’t lack ideas to improve public education (or passion about those various ideas), and this initiative provides a great opportunity to experiment with some of those ideas.

After the voucher vote, I’ve had many people tell me how happy or sad they were that vouchers failed. But, regardless of their position on vouchers, they often express a strong desire to figure out a way to pay the best teachers more money. Matching that desire with an appropriate and fair way to actually to do it is a huge and complex task.

Rather than have one group come up a plan, Utah will now run more than 87 separate experiments. WOW! The appropriation for performance pay measures was fairly small ($19,000,000) and very loose, intentionally providing local education leaders tons of flexibility to come up with a plan they think might work. We’ll monitor those experiments, collect the results and determine next steps.

Recently, the Utah Foundation matched parents’ gut-level reaction (“Forget vouchers. If you want to improve public education, pay the best teachers more.”) with actual data, concluding that funding increases for public education don’t produce improvement, unless those increases are tied to performance pay incentives.

The Washington County plan is quite extensive. In an off-the-charts-cool approach to this experiment, the Beaver School District had each individual school come up with an individual plan.

Well, Well, Paul Rolly

Just when I dish on the fluffiness of the Media, Paul Rolly writes a very substantive analysis of the Treasurer’s race. The first substantive analysis I’ve seen, as a matter of fact.

I’ll disagree with a few of Mr. Rolly’s points: The scandal played a big role in the outcome (and I still haven’t seen a hint in the Media yet about the fact that the source of the allegations is a key backer for Ellis and that he stands to make millions for his employer/self(?) based on decisions made by the Treasurer or even an acknowledgement that any questionable conduct arose out of a CONVERSATION, NOT A SOLILOQUY, involving both candidates and the witness/kingmaker) . Qualifications also played a role in the outcome; Ellis’s background experience looked better to voters. The UEA was in the thing more for voucher payback than concerns over retirement benefits. And, from my perspective, the defined benefit (DB)/defined contribution (DC) issue doesn’t have enough legs to be the key motivating factor; though a shift from DB to DC could make sense in some ways, the transition would be problematic (the transition problem requires a separate, quite-detailed post; it has to do with exponential cost increases that would be incurred in providing defined benefits for a long, but diminishing, tail of DB recipients as other workers moved to a DC system).

But, I do agree that competing philosophies were (and still are) at the root of the battle. Largely, people who want tax cuts aligned behind Walker, and people who oppose tax cuts aligned behind Ellis. It’s another round of the role-of-government debate. And, as Mr. Rolly writes, special interests worked hard and, ultimately, effectively. And, good for them. That’s a legitimate part of the process. If people don’t like that fact, they need to dig in and outwork the special interests.

UPDATE: I don't know what to make of it, but it is interesting to note that the number of readers rating Mr. Rolly's column was way up (by a factor of 7 or 10 or so), and that they weighed in to rate it low.

Media Bias? Nah!

"I'm not 100% sure that" the media is wildly biased in what it decides to investigate and report or how it determines when allegations are to be reported as fact or be shrugged off as politically motivated. (Hand it to David Irvine; to get quoted on that canard is dandy legal work. I'm not 100% sure that it's repugnant to trot out such an allegation in that manner, but I am 100% sure that it's a biased reporter who gets hooked by such a sham lure).

So, let's do a little research. I reviewed the, um, reporting of Glen Warchol and Rebecca Walsh, until I felt I had lost 40 IQ points (yes, yes, like all neanderthal conservatives, that would mean that I dropped below zero), and -- among mountains of political displeasures -- I found narry a discordant chirp about any political figure anywhere left of conservative.

Now, hold on! Surely, professional journalists, like Warchol and Walsh, couldn't really operate from a perspective of 100% bias. Could they? After all, they're torchbearers for a venerable daily, even more, for the dispassionate fourth estate itself -- not, say, bloggers, for heaven's sake. They lobby hard for their tax exempt status, because they act (cue "God Bless America") in the public good. So, perhaps someone who can endure more than 5 minutes of their superiority and poor writing would be willing to review their posts in detail and list, oh, I don't know, 5 times that they've held up their journalistic lights to non-conservatives.

So, Glen, let me lead you by the nose on this one and answer your question for you. If you dig into the specific allegations, it's not really that tough. Who is Mr. Big? No one. That's who the complainants named -- no one. So, if no one has been named, then it's either no one or its 103 possibilities in the Legislature, assuming we weed out the hundreds of non-legislators who might believe they could affect budgetary decisions.

But, you posted a picture of Speaker Curtis. Now, in a fact that surely has nothing to do with anything, Speaker Curtis, right of center, won his previous election by less than 20 votes and happens to be a talked-about political target for the Democrats this year.

Why stop there, Glen? Democrats are energized about other races too. If you're going to use Big Media to unabashedly do their electioneering, and if you're willing to divine specific legislators out of the unnamed 103 possibilities, why not implicate a few others? If you're going to abandon presumptions of innocence until proof of guilt and, instead, embrace guilt before specific accusations are even raised, we'll, you've got no strings to hold you down. Other than limiting yourself to just smearing conservatives. But, of course, (of undeviating course), you don't need to be reminded to do that.

UPDATE: Well, that's a nice start. Glen admits that he's biased and (sort of) admits that his targets are lopsidedly conservatives. Bias is fine and free speech is fine. As the Media knows and faithfully practices, identification of biases can inform readers about a story or an institution.

Utah Valley University

Hooray and good luck!

You're Joking, Right?

Rep. Steven Mascaro commented on a post where I opined that his approach to politics is grandstanding and hackish, and, to point of fact, ineffectual. (At least I assume it really was him. It does have several difficult-to-replicate indicia that he actually did write it.).

Thank you, Rep. Mascaro, for allowing the public a wonderful opportunity to verify your rhetoric. Thank you. Usually you hide behind vague, unverifiable broadsides on people who are doing their level best. And, the media is all too glad to parrot your accusations, without attempting to check any facts. Thank you, for this time giving us some specifics that can be analyzed and that clearly show that your claims of victimization by thuggish colleagues are false.

Rep. Mascaro claims that I buried his bills in Rules this past session. Not so, as I told him on 1/30/08, when he screamed at me and swore vengeance.

In 2007, Rep. Mascaro did have some extraordinarily bad legislation or legislation where he never would be able to pull together a working consensus. So, much of it didn’t go anywhere. However, he had stirred up a constituency on a bill that aimed to mandate insurance coverage for morbid obesity (by working with the media, instead of health care providers and insurers). The bill had no legs. But, he asked if I’d send it to his standing committee, so that he could put on a bit of a show. He promised, as chair of the committee, that it would never get out of committee, even if he had to publicly protest that outcome. That’s what happened. He was happy. I thought we were BFF. Until he uncorked on me in 2008.

So, let’s examine the horrible treatment he received at my hands in 2008.

Two of his bills, HB 20 and HB 21, took a rocket ride on the fast track. Immediately, they skipped the (time-consuming) step of a standing committee hearing during the session and went straight to the board for consideration by the whole House. (Bills that have been approved unanimously by an interim committee are eligible for such rock star treatment; but, they don't all get it.). As a matter of fact, HB 21 was out of the House and to the Senate on day 1 of the session. I doubt any other representative – and surely not more than 2 or 3 – was given such a meteoric start by the Rules Committee.

HB 59 was sent to a standing committee on the third day of the session. Still rock star treatment.

Take a good look at HB 158. That’s the one where I got screamed at and threatened. He had asked me about it before. I told him that it was not in the possession of the Rules Committee. That means that it could only be in one place – the Fiscal Analysts’ office. It’s not rocket science. It’s got to be in one of two places. (And, thus, it is absolutely astounding -- or, more accurately, embarrassing -- that he’d claim I could hide it for 10 days; one hour after being sworn in, a decent freshman legislator knows that legislation has to be in one of two places, if it hasn’t gone to a standing committee; it’s either (A) with the Rules Committee or (B) with the Fiscal Analysts’ office. A or B. It can’t be anywhere else. There is no C, D, or E. It’s got to be in one of those two places, A or B. If a legislator is confused, he can take one minute and find it. 10 days? Wow!).

So, again, please take a look at the status report on HB 158. Rules took possession of the bill on 1/30. Mascaro talked with the clerk and uncorked on me on 1/30. Bully that I am, the bill went to a standing committee . . . when? We’re going to do a bit of training on fact checking, and I’ll let you answer that question. You’ll see that Rules received the bill on 1/30; now look for the date of the line that says, “House/to standing committee.” Clearly, I’m a bad man, and I deserved to be threatened.

On HB 232, a few Rules Committee members pointed out to Rep. Mascaro that the State currently is in the middle of a $7,500,000 elementary school math initiative project, and that we need to receive and analyze the results of that study before launching in another direction. We asked whether he might consider changing his legislation a bit. Of course not. Even on this non-starter bill, though, he was treated very well by the Rules Committee, and the bill was sent to a standing committee with over a month to go in the session.

Rules never received HB 496, meaning that he abandoned it.

So, Rep. Mascaro’s last bill was sent out very early in the process. No one can dispute that this is anything other than superb treatment by the Rules Committee. Yet, with lots of bluster, Rep. Mascaro reports that the Rules Committee stuck it to him. Facts. Those pesky facts. Borrowing Rep. Mascaro’s suggestion: “Now multiply that times [sic] the many occassions [sic] that” Rep. Mascaro has been quoted (with no verifiable factual evidence) to say that a conservative cabal is out to get him, and you’ll see that this just might be “the tip of the ice berge [sic]” to a polemic witch hunt.

So, thank you, Steven, for finally giving us some facts to analyze regarding your alleged victim status and my observation that you are a grandstanding political hack. My opinion stands. Then, again, maybe in that golden age of “decorum” and “professional courtesy” legislators could simply make up stuff and use those lies and distortions to malign colleagues, and everyone just thought it was precious.

I happen to think it's a pretty wonderful age now, when people don't have to rely on a biased media for information, but instead can easily check facts for themselves.

Investigations -- Timing

Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert has been pilloried for waiting to act on Richard Ellis’s allegations until after the primary election. The delay, many argue, is a sure sign of cronyism, protectionism, good old boyism, etc. If that’s the case, and it's not just the experienced realization that a politically-motivated witch hunt might be going on, then Democratic Representative Phil Riesen must be part of that conservative cabal.

On June 18^th, he and Rep. Sheryl Allen went toe-to-toe on the timing, manner and purpose of their planned ethics complaint against Rep. Mark Walker. While Rep. Allen was extremely eager to file the complaint immediately before the primary, accompanied by a splashy press release, Rep. Riesen recoiled at the political crassness. Instead, he wanted it to be less political, waiting until after the primary and doing it quietly through the ethics committee, instead of through the media. He won on one of those two points.

These kinds of things are important to know, if – as we are forebodingly told today – more, unspecified ethics allegations are to come (say, shortly before the general election?). There’s always the chance that politics are involved in politics.

Rep. Riesen, thank you for the restraint on the timing issue. I support organizations policing their members, whether that’s a bar association, a team, a family, or a legislature. But, as we see here and in so many other contexts, the concept of innocent until proven guilty has no meaning in election cycles and the media. Thus, it is important that members of an organization approach the organization’s disciplinary process with restraint – which usually means out of the public’s eye, until the disciplinary body reaches its conclusion, which, then, can be released along with the allegations; otherwise, the disciplinary process itself can become a tool for significant abuse.

Coincidence, I'm Sure

Three members of the House complained bitterly that their bills were being held by the House Rules Committee -- of which Mark Walker is 1 of 8 members (1 of 6 Republican members). Those 3 complainants are (drum roll please) Neil Hansen, Sheryl Allen and Steve Mascaro.

In 2007 and most of 2008, each rules committee member nominated an equal number of bills to the list the Rules Committee would consider for committee assignments or floor prioritization, meaning that those 3 couldn't find a single member to move his/her legislation. When Hansen, Allen and Mascaro complained that their legislation wasn't moving, I candidly told them that they were perceived on both sides of the aisle to be grandstanding hacks who brought little of value to the process, and that the perception probably wasn't helping their cause. (For example, Phil might want to explain to Neil why no Democrat on the Rules Committee and no member of Democratic leadership in the House was willing to lift a finger to get any of Neil's legislation moving forward). I pointed out to the 3 that they only needed 1 member of the Rules Committee to help them out; but, I pointed out, they couldn't find a single committee member who believed they had anything of value to add; I suggested that they might want to consider why that was. Of course, none of the 3 liked hearing that, and all 3 promised vengeance on Rules Committee members, if their legislation did not move forward. Their legislation did not move forward. It just might be possible that they're now delivering on that promise, kicking a Rules Committee member when, clearly, he is down.

That's a funny aspect of politics. It has long been my perception that these 3 members are cancer -- unwilling to accept the fact that they cannot work well enough with colleagues to ever convince them to do anything, and willing to use any way possible, legitimate or not, to gain relevance. Yet, now, they proclaim themselves surgeons, ready to remove the cancer.

As it should, the ethics committee will investigate the allegations and make a determination. However, if things are going to be laid on the table for dispassionate consideration, it also might be proper to consider whether the accusations themselves are politically motivated. Because I was told by the 3 that vengeance would be exacted, that seems like a fair inquiry. This simply could be politics as usual.

And, because the victimization story is sure to follow, let's go on record now that none of the 3 can move legislation. (In 2007-08, Hansen passed 1 bill out of 26 attempts; Allen was 5-for-14; Mascaro was 4-for-11). I'm sure that next term, when they also can't move legislation, because they still won't be able to work effectively with others, they'll claim that it is because of retribution for their bravery in filing the complaint, and the media will eat it up without ever pointing out their prior ineffectiveness.

UPDATE (7/1/08): Notice the close of Bob Bernick's article today. Conservatives very bad. I'm sure Bob will follow up in 2 years, to let us know whether thuggish conservatives retaliated against Hansen and upset his previous lofty pass rate of 3.8%. I guess it's possible. Maybe parking privileges could be taken away, or something along those lines.

Education: Pay for Performance

Tremendous things are happening in public education!

It seems that citizens, educators and policymakers are on the same page (imagine that!) regarding the merit of performance-based pay for teachers. The (very) tough thing, of course, is to figure out how we go about it.

This past session, the Legislature passed SB 281, which provides $20,000,000 for the districts to figure out a pay-for-performance ("PFP") plan that they believe works best for the