ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, July 1, 1996 TAG: 9607010036
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
VIRGINIA consistently ranks at or near the top nationally in state fiscal management - and does so, notes an official of the watchdog Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, without the fanfare of dramatic introductions of new budgeting or management techniques.
Not that Richard Kirk Jonas sees no value in such innovations as zero-based budgeting, a fashion of the '70s, or benchmarking, the rage of the '90s. To the contrary: Jonas, deputy director of the JLARC staff, is an advocate of the benchmarking now under development, agency by agency, in Virginia.
But unlike, say, Oregon, Virginia is not treating this as a revolution. In Virginia, it is an evolutionary step in keeping with a long tradition of improving management by incremental evolution.
Oregon grabbed national attention in 1992 with publication of highly specific performance objectives - that is, benchmarks - for 272 public-policy goals. Jonas, writing earlier this year in the News Letter of the University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, finds much to commend about the benchmarks. They were comprehensive, reflected extensive public participation, were measurable, and included existing achievement levels to compare against subsequent performance.
But what Oregon neglected in its benchmarking, says Jonas, was adequate consideration of how to reach the goals. For example, Oregon's report only noted briefly the nettlesome issue of how to pay for the increased public services that many of the goals would require. Such a disconnect is a prescription for trouble: After formally setting a goal of becoming No. 1 in Financial World magazine's quality-of-management rankings, for example, Oregon instead fell from No. 6 to No. 25.
Meanwhile, Virginia was ranked No. 1 in 1992 and '93, and No. 2 in 1995. The secret, suggests Jonas, is "continued, almost boring adherence" to several time-honored principles - that good financial management is apolitical; that it is the shared responsibility of governors, legislators and bureaucrats, all of whom are expected to work hard at it; that it takes time and continual evolution to improve it.
In other words, flashy new tools are nice - but you need craftsmen able and willing to use them well. Virginia is right to introduce benchmarking; it can be an effective innovation. The state is also right, however, to proceed with caution.
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