Looking at life in the unexamined state

The unexamined life, Socrates said, is not worth living. He said it after he had been found guilty of heresy and sedition for educating the youth of Athens by getting them to ask tough questions about themselves and their society. He had a choice between living out the rest of a life devoted to critical thinking in prison or ending it with a cup of hemlock. He went with death by lethal ingestion.

Though the stakes are not as high, or at least so immediately fatal, Maine state government leads a fiscal life so unexamined you’d think, as the solons of Athens apparently thought, that the best way to deal with the unpleasant aspects of life is to ignore them and to kill those who don’t. We know precisely how much we spend. We know to the penny what it’s spent on. We haven’t a clue as to whether we get our money’s worth.

We are hardly alone in the current world of financial hurt. The growth in state spending here – up 60 percent in the last six years – is about par for the nation. The deficit – $270 million this year, up to $1 billion the next two years – is middling. What sets Maine apart is that, while nearly all of the 42 states that found themselves with severe budget problems this year have progressed from taking immediate stopgap measures to undertaking structural reform of spending and taxation policies, this state has not. That’s because while this state, like all others, has accountants and auditors galore to add up the price of government, it is one of just six with nobody assessing its value.

At least no one who can assess independently and objectively. We’ve tried letting departments and the too-friendly legislative committees of jurisdiction assess themselves and we can see where it’s gotten us. Look where it got Enron.

That may change come the first of the year. One of the best bills the last Legislature passed was to create the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability and a joint legislative oversight committee. It is up to the incoming Legislature to fund it. Although this might seem an inopportune time to make government bigger (even if by just 7.5 full-time jobs), this is just when it is needed most.

Florida has had its Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability since 1994. It is the model for the Maine proposal; sponsor Rep. David Trahan of Waldoboro met with Floridians and got a first-hand look. As of last year, OPPGA has made recommendations for savings and efficiencies totaling $2.5 billion. While implementation those recommendations was slow at first – good times have a way of making thrift seem irrelevant – the Florida Legislature was able to find sensible savings of $270 million when the economic slowdown first began in 2000 and another $1 billion this year because, Rep. Trahan says, “OPPGA told it where to look.”

In its eight years, OPPGA has studied virtually everything Florida government does and how they can be done better. One small instance: acting on OPPGA recommendations, the Florida Lottery was able to reduce administrative costs by $11.8 million over three years, money that went directly into school funding; another recommendation to increase the percentage of proceeds going out in prizes (and consequently reducing the percentage for schools) led

to increased ticket sales that generated an additional $12 million for schools last year.

It would seem a slam dunk that Maine – a state with a government phone book listing 181 different departments, agencies and bureaus with 22,000 (full-time equivalent) employees – might make good use of more one office and 7.5 more employees to keep an impartial eye on things. As one more example of why Maine has such a lousy national reputation for its fiscal policies and is the odds-on favorite as the state most likely to experience a full-blown taxpayer revolt, it’s not even a layup.

The Legislative Oversight Committee will consist of two senators and six representatives, equally split between Republicans and Democrats and ideally – due to the sensitive nature of this assignment, the potential for toes to get stepped and oxen to get gored – all independent, critical thinkers. How these assignments will be made will be one of the first decisions for the new Legislature when it convenes Jan. 8. One proposal, supported by the Joint Rules Committee, to have the members of this oversight committee elected by each party’s full caucuses, rather than the usual method of selection by party leadership, is a novel approach that will help ensure the ideal. The alternate proposal to have all members, of both parties, appointed by leadership of the majority party is a novel approach that will ensure cynicism.

As for this new office itself, there is the current budget $82,000 for start-up. Incoming lawmakers will be looking for budget cuts and new programs are always a favorite target. To cut $82,000 that will give Maine its best chance ever to take a hard look at itself in order to put a tiny dent in a $1 billion deficit would be the ultimate in penny-wise pound-foolishness.

As for the ongoing cost of the office, the fiscal note attached to the bill by the Office of Fiscal and Program Review (despite what the name suggests, they estimate costs of legislation but they don’t review the effectiveness and efficiency of the programs that result) says it will be $1.04 million per year. Sen. Ed Youngblood of Penobscot, another sponsor, notes that Idaho’s very effective Office of Program Evaluations has eight full-time employees yet costs just $600,000, about one sixteenth of what it saved Idaho through recommended efficiencies in its tax collection system alone.

Sen. Youngblood doesn’t know if Fiscal and Program Review overestimates the cost because it honestly, though mistakenly, thinks government accountability requires high-priced accountants (its original estimate of $1.3 million included three) or if this inflated price tag is intentional, a budgetary cup of hemlock brewed to kill this important idea. He wants a detailed breakdown of estimated costs to find out.

We know the new Legislature will balance the budget; the Constitution requires it. The question is whether Maine will come out of it knowing some very important things about itself or whether, once this crisis is over, it will be back to life as usual in the unexamined state.

Bruce Kyle is the assistant editorial page editor for the Bangor Daily News.