Owning Your Future
I will present the bill that contains the "Challenges for Change" to the Senate on Tuesday, Feb. 8. This is an important bill that will change the way Vermont government judges success and should save millions of dollars.
At the end of last session, it was clear that Vermont and the country were in a serious recession and that it would be a long time before we recover.
We also knew that it was time to take a serious look at how we deliver state services and find ways to do it better with less.
In the face of significant state layoffs and the continued dropping of revenues, we put aside $100,000 to ask for proposals from professional groups that have worked with governments of all sizes to help us reach the goal of permanent savings through restructuring. Our target was $34 million in 2011, with more in the next year.
A company called Public Strategies was awarded the contract. They have over 20 years of experience and they have previously done work in Vermont. The result of their work with the oversight committee is Challenges for Change. This document is available on the legislative web page and I highly recommend you check it out.
The way to change how government services are delivered is not by having some high paid folks from "away" come in and give you ideas.
Change is best achieved by having the executive and legislative branches working together to achieve common goals.
What Public Strategies has done is facilitate these communications. The outcome is a series of "challenges". Let me give you an example:
A challenge is to get better outcomes from contractors and grantees at a 3.5% lower cost in FY11 and 10% less cost to the state in FY12. The state of Vermont has a total of $200 million in contracts every year. Most of these contracts and grants pay for hours or other units of effort, not for results.
It's time to make a change to performance-based contracts. In other states, these changes have led not only to significant dollar savings, but better services.
This effort is all about looking at government services in a different way. It's about setting the outcomes that we want, allocating the money and evaluating the results. I know that sounds simple, but mostly government doesn't work that way.
This type of reform can lead to a much more transparent form of budgeting.
It will allow the folks who are working in an area to know exactly what the outcomes are that are expected of their programs. They know they will be measured on the outcomes. We all will know what is working and what isn't working.
I find this entire idea really exciting and am looking forward to working with folks over the session to further develop the idea of developing more challenges for each agency.
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.
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Thank you for your support! Please contact me to visit your area to explore the challenges and successes in your part of Vermont, or just to talk.
Sincerely,
Susan Bartlett
Bartlett for Governor