From VPR today:

([Governor Elect Peter] Shumlin) “I guess my biggest regret that Challenges to Change was never intended to be a way to cut budgets. It was intended to be a way to change the way that government does business.”

This statement is, of course, rather silly. Of course it was about budgets. If you don’t trust your own memory, check the media coverage at the time. The Free Press (paywalled): “a budgeting experiment”. WCAX: “a savings plan”. The AP (paywalled): “…general fund savings through a process dubbed Challenges for Change.”.

Fact: Shumlin’s statement that this “never intended to be a way to cut budgets” is an attempt at a political retcon. Couple this with the other oft-heard mythology of the last year (after C-for-C so badly blew up with nonprofits and constituency groups), also best articulated by the Governor-Elect, that “The mistake we made was by thinking we could do it with an administration who wanted to decimate many of the services of state government.”, and you have the new line: we meant well, there’s a good idea in there (that wasn’t even “ours” as it came from out-of-state consultants), but the Governor screwed it up.

None of which fully reflects the reality of the legislative leadership’s role. Challenges was borne from a budget crisis, built on budget cutting targets, and its manifestation was as a creature of the legislature – and it is in that legislature run by Speaker Smith and Shumlin that the inevitably-controversial proposals were fast tracked. The big bad Governor, of course, had no say over the legislative calendar, after all. Challenges was also a fiercely ideological creature, not the blandly clerical project it is no presented as (for example, it contained among its legislative proposals the abject destruction of the environmental permitting system).

But here’s the reality now: after relationships between advocates and legislators were damaged, after a large scale mobilization of constituency groups arose to counter it, “Challenges for Change” became an albatross. It was a mistake, and words like “failed” and “mistake” from Smith and Shumlin make it abundantly clear that they know it.

So here’s the question: given that face-saving postscripts and historical fudges are a standard element of “moving on,” not simply in the public, political arena, but even in more day-to-day interpersonal settings, should activists allow this retcon to take?

My own feeling is yes. It doesn’t hurt us any to get in on the rah-rahs in this way – in fact, in doing so we simply allow the sense that Challenges was a debacle to become even more firmly entrenched as conventional wisdom, and that’s a good thing. We also potentially feed momentum to reinvent the budget slashing process into something more akin to what our Democratic leaders now claim C-for-C was always meant to be – a push for efficiency. Who doesn’t love efficiency?

But as the man said, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. So while we may quietly acquiesce to the Challenges was just misunderstood, and it was all Jim Douglas’s fault anyway reality, there should be no mistake that the advocacy and activist community does remember how it really went down.

And we’ll be watching.

From VPR today:

([Governor Elect Peter] Shumlin) “I guess my biggest regret that Challenges to Change was never intended to be a way to cut budgets. It was intended to be a way to change the way that government does business.”

This statement is, of course, rather silly. Of course it was about budgets. If you don’t trust your own memory, check the media coverage at the time. The Free Press (paywalled): “a budgeting experiment.” WCAX: “a savings plan”. The AP (paywalled): “…general fund savings through a process dubbed Challenges for Change.”

Fact: Shumlin’s statement that this was “never intended to be a way to cut budgets” is an attempt at a political retcon. Couple this with the other oft-heard mythology of the last year (after C-for-C so badly blew up with nonprofits and constituency groups), also best articulated by the Governor-Elect, that “The mistake we made was by thinking we could do it with an administration who wanted to decimate many of the services of state government”, and you have the new line: we meant well, there’s a good idea in there (that wasn’t even “ours” as it came from out-of-state consultants), but the Governor screwed it up.

None of which fully reflects the reality of the legislative leadership’s role. Challenges was borne from a budget crisis, built on budget cutting targets, and its manifestation was as a creature of the legislature – and it is in that legislature run by Speaker Smith and Shumlin that the inevitably-controversial proposals were fast tracked. The big bad Governor, of course, had no say over the legislative calendar, after all. Challenges was also a fiercely ideological creature, not the blandly clerical project it is now presented as (for example, it contained among its legislative proposals the abject destruction of the environmental permitting system).

But here’s the reality now: after relationships between advocates and legislators were damaged, after a large scale mobilization of constituency groups arose to counter it, “Challenges for Change” became an albatross. It was a mistake, and words like “failed” and “mistake” from Smith and Shumlin make it abundantly clear that they know it.

So here’s the question: given that face-saving postscripts and historical fudges are a standard element of “moving on,” not simply in the public, political arena, but even in more day-to-day interpersonal settings, should activists allow this retcon to take?

My own feeling is yes. It doesn’t hurt us any to get in on the rah-rahs in this way – in fact, in doing so we simply allow the sense that Challenges was a debacle to become even more firmly entrenched as conventional wisdom, and that’s a good thing. We also potentially feed momentum to reinvent the budget slashing process into something more akin to what our Democratic leaders now claim C-for-C was always meant to be – a push for efficiency. Who doesn’t love efficiency?

But as the man said, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. So while we may quietly acquiesce to the Challenges was just misunderstood, and it was all Jim Douglas’s fault anyway reality, there should be no mistake that the advocacy and activist community does remember how it really went down.

And we’ll be watching.