(In keeping with GMD’s policy of promoting gubernatorial candidate’s first-person diaries to the front page, here is the latest from Susan Bartlett. – promoted by Sue Prent)
The biggest challenge when considering “Challenges for Change” is to stay calm and keep an open mind.
The important things to consider are the outcomes, not the administration’s ideas for how to get there. Challenges for Change is designed to eliminate drive-by budgeting and blind cuts.
The administration’s current proposal throws good programs under the bus.
Read on …
Several Senate committees, including the Appropriations committee that I chair, are looking at the administration’s ideas. I am pushing back, negotiating with the administration to make sure that we keep the programs that work. The programs that don’t work will be cut.
Challenges for Change is controversial because it is an earthquake shift in how government works. It demands that we reexamine everything from how we buy things, to what programs we pay for, in the light of results rather than intentions.
Everything we do must work to achieve the outcomes and be measurable.
I’ve heard, “We can’t do this, we can’t do that,” a lot in the past week. That says to me we need to keep government the same.
I strongly disagree.
For years I have heard from people in government and government-supported organizations. They have said many times they have ideas for how we can work better and cheaper. Now is the time for them to come forward with those ideas.
Now is not the time to say, “No, we can’t.” It is time to say, “This is how we will.”
We must save $38 million with Challenges for Change. It is an opportunity for the folks running the programs to find the savings. If they fail we’ll go back to budget cuts inflicted by the administration and next year we’ll have $75 million to add to the projected $100 million shortfall.
Change is scary. It is hard to re-imagine what we have done for years to find a new way, but that is exactly what we must do.
Meeting the outcomes of Challenges for change will require calm, open-minded leadership. I am that leader.
Let’s work together to bring new leadership to the governor’s office, to build a better future based on Vermont’s values and traditions.
Change can be scary. That’s about all I”ll agree with. The “challenge” that State government faces is meeting social programs that we largely support with a budget that doesn’t produce the money to do so- bureaucratic reductions and cost-savings from systematic duplicity are one thing, but the fact of the matter that everyone on the “in” knows is that the most well-off in VT just need to pay more. The budget is not going to get balanced on the backs of those of us who are most vulnerable/least able to pay.
‘Challenges for Change’ is nothing more than a conservative effort to squeeze juice out of a dry fruit and everyone with their head on strait knows it… I’ve talked to them all at bars throughout Montpelier.
This post is total BS.
I hope your kick-back from Douglas is good, Susan, to say such an absurd and non-sensical thing.
Yearly budgets, afterall, are, really, meaningless in the face of overall and long-term economic and social health and stability. France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, (etc) all prove that quite well. The 2011 VT budget short-full is meaningless- finding increased budget efficiencies are a very good idea, but cutting social programs are absurd. The most productive economies in the world (not to mention the highest rates of infant mortality and the longest lifespans and highest quality of life) all reside in countries that unabashedly tax the fuck out of those with more, for the benefit of those with less.
Or lets put it another way: my driveway is bad, my tires are bald. Should I a) get new tires and continue to drive a poor driveway which will just destroy my new tires as the old? b) get a new driveway but keep my shitty tires, thus leading to the eventual destruction of my car?, or c) invest now in adequate tires and repairs to my driveway that will both be paid off over time and lead to an immediate reduction in the difficulty I face when coming home daily and the longevity of my vehicle? Sure, “c” costs more now, but clearly less later. Seems to be the choice in front of us.
The same folks who created the VT “Challenges for Change” report also created the “Zoom into Change” report for Iowa in 2004. Six years later, what headline appears in yesterday’s DesMoines Register?
It looks like Iowa’s experience with 6 years of “savings” from the Public Service Group’s revenue and services decimation program (no matter what “chumpy, changey” name they use for it) has left Iowa with a big fat budget deficit. These fabulous savings have drained their rainy day fund and used up all their federal stimulus money, and yet, the hole remains. Did you notice: they’re re-reorganizing, too. Apparently, just like in the corporate world, where reorganization is code for “failing and flailing,” Iowa is finding that the “Zoom into Change” was mostly the fast road to failure.
Did anyone in Vermont’s political leadership take the time to talk to, say, anyone in Iowa to determine what happened to their state budget and state services since this charade was implemented there?
Why do we let these economic charlatans roll us, over and over again? What ever happened to due diligence?
You can try and market this concept all you want, but it’s only a concept. There were never any ways to put it in motion, and now you have two weeks to put wheels on the bus to nowhere. Snelling and Big Mac pulled you in and you were happy to join the conga line. The music has stopped though.
…but be nice,” folks – these pols don’t have to post here (although it is the easiest way to reach about 6,000-10,000 likely primary voters, but still…)
My $.02, for what it’s worth.
…about programs that “don’t work” is that you get to blame them for failing when you underfund them so you can put them on the chopping block the next year.