Utah's Budget

An important part of successfully riding out a storm is to be prepared before the storm hits. Obviously. During the boom years, there was great pressure on the Legislature to grow government. We did – actually, by a lot. But, to great opposition, we also took some fiscally-responsible actions that did not grow programs; specifically, we cut taxes, we appropriated cash toward capital projects, and we socked away money in rainy-day funds.

Governments get themselves in trouble during the good times, by building programs that can’t be sustained during economically bad times or flat times – leading to cuts and serious economic dislocations. As Sen. Hillyard reports, the State of Utah is doing okay. So far. We’ll see where the economy will head from here, but citizens and business owners can take some comfort in the fact that the State’s budget is holding together well for the time being.

You’ll notice that I said it is difficult to sustain programs in economically flat times. With Utah’s tremendous growth, we have to appropriate additional tens of millions of dollars every year, if we want to merely maintain level funding for programs. Think of increased student numbers and Medicaid and CHIP enrollees, for example, not to mention cost escalations and inflation.

One additional observation. Because it is always tough to move away from the status quo, governmental fat typically is cut only when it has to be. Sad, but very true. So, economic downturns invite/force Legislatures to get even tougher on prioritizing spending decisions. This is one reason why it is such a shame that the federal government has no qualms about running massive deficits; there never is a strong push to cut/reform fat governmental programs. Instead, making Enron look responsible by comparison, the federal government avoids tough decisions and foists pain on future generations.

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.