More on Budget Ignorance

The more closely I re-read Adam Davis' Oregonian article, the more clever it appears. Its purpose is to de-legitimize critics of bigger government, higher taxes, and more spending, and to pave the way for a tax increase, a sales tax, or both.

Davis establishes that "at least eight out of 10 Oregon voters oppose cutting services to seniors and funding for K-12 education" in order to balance the state budget. Using popularity as a proxy for legitimacy, he implies that any reduction in spending in either area is illegitimate. (This is consistent with the findings of public choice theory, that no specific cut is ever as attractive as the general idea of cuts. Davis would probably find majorities favoring protecting every area of the budget.)

Yet both "services to seniors and funding for K-12 education" contain wasteful programs that can and should be cut, in order to free up money for the programs that do work. Why is it a good idea to follow Davis' lead and assume that neither area should be scrutinized for efficiencies?

Davis then reports that random voters cannot accurately guess budget numbers. This is a surprise? And why does it rate as newsworthy? Yet Davis wants us to believe it means that cuts are unjustified.

He then flat out lies: "more than 90 percent of the state budget goes to" seniors and K-12 education. No, less than half does. (It's about 90% of the General Fund that he means, but by being vague and over-stating his case Davis again gives the false impression that there's nothing else to discuss.)

As the piece unfolds, Davis attributes all disagreement with his position to "the information gap" and condescendingly says that politicians just can't help themselves when they claim that there's money to be saved or waste to be reduced.

But any such claim is a "something-for-nothing" promise that inherently cannot be fulfilled - and if the public is cynical, it's the fault of those politicians who said something could be done to save money.

Meanwhile the responsible politicians are stuck with brutal, evil, heartless, fill-in-the-blank choices to either slash "vital" services, throw grandma into the street, or (sniff) raise taxes.

Therefore, Davis concludes, the only way to solve things is to "educate" (i.e. indoctrinate) the voters into understanding that no savings are possible, that those who disagree are ignorant or dishonest, and tax hikes are inevitable.

All in all a sweet piece of propaganda. Too bad the facts are not on his side.

Immortality is mine! I am published in the Rap Sheet!

Took me a while to find it, but turns out I was recently published in the Rap Sheet, the monthly newsletter of the Portland Police Association. Very kind of them.

Talk About Budget Ignorance

In a recent guest opinion, a man who ought to know better (Adam Davis, a partner at the opinion research firm Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall) commits so many blunders and makes so many patronizing comments, it's clear he's nowhere close to understanding his fellow Oregonians.

He's right that we need honest communication to rebuild public dialog and public trust. He should have set an example by being honest himself.

Here is his commentary in total, with my comments in italics:

IN MY OPINION Adam Davis

Thursday, June 02, 2005 The Oregonian

Confronting our own budget ignorance

A s a public opinion researcher, I see time and again that voters are becoming less aware of how government works and the benefits government provides them. As a citizen, I'm deeply troubled by this.
Poor ignorant little voters just don't know all the wonderful, wonderful things that Big Daddy Government does for them. Let's pat them on the head.

Our firm recently completed a statewide survey for the advocacy group Citizens for Oregon's Future ("Voters lack awareness on budget," May 18). What we learned was expected but disturbing. Oregon voters as a whole are ill-informed about what choices the Legislature must actually make.
Or, you did a set-up job with loaded questions designed to "prove" that the voters are just unaware and out of touch. Great cover for big spending politicians - I wonder who paid for it... oh, Citizens for Oregon's Future! A special interest group dedicated to growing the size and power of government. How shocking that the people who paid for the survey got the answers they wanted.

Am I being fair in my depiction of COF? Well, the founder and Executive Director is Rhys Scholes, former aid to then-Multnomah County Chairwoman Beverly Stein and frequent apologist for big government. Their Communications Director is Steve Novick, onetime head of the "Center for Constructive Citizen Action" - apparently a Big Labor front organization, though now apparently defunct.

At least eight out of 10 Oregon voters oppose cutting services to seniors and funding for K-12 education to balance the state budget. And more than half think the state spends "too much" on services other than education, public safety, health care and services to seniors. But nearly two-thirds did not offer an estimate of the percentage of the state budget that goes to those "other" services. The average answer for those who did offer an estimate was 32 percent. But in fact, more than 90 percent of the state budget goes to the named services that voters clearly support and less than 10 percent goes to "other" services.
Oooh! More than 90% of "the budget" - but of course he doesn't say "the General Fund budget" because then he'd be admitting he's talking about 90% of 1/4 of the total state budget. Wouldn't want anybody to know that.

More than seven out of 10 likely voters did not even guess what percent of school district budgets go toward central administration. The average answer among those who did was 34 percent, which greatly exaggerates what are considered to be actual school administration costs.
"What are considered..." - people use the passive when they don't want to state who's doing the deed. Davis doesn't say that 45 cents of every education dollar fails to make it into the classroom to pay for the costs of instruction.

This poll is consistent with other research. The Progress Board has found that 85 percent of Oregonians do not know that the income tax is the primary source of state revenue
Maybe because it's not - less than one dollar of every four spent by the state comes from individual income tax revenue.

and that education is the largest state expenditure.
Not even close. The biggest chunk is Human Services at $9.7 billion, then Administration at $7 billion, then Economic Development at $5.3 billion, then the State School Fund (for K-12) at $5 billion, then higher ed (colleges/universities) at $4.5 billion.

Oh, if you lump K-12 together with higher ed and "other education" you could challenge Human Services... but Davis isn't here to educate, but to obfuscate.

In the statewide Oregon Values and Beliefs poll that our firm conducted in 2002, only 59 percent of respondents mentioned education when we asked what services state and local government pays for -- which means that more than 40 percent of Oregonians did not think of education as something their tax dollars pay for.
Wow. And some 25% of Oregon households have kids in public schools. Your point?

And only 17 percent mentioned health care, which is, in fact, one of the largest items in the state budget.
Maybe because most Oregonians aren't the beneficiaries of the massive and wasteful spending of the Oregon Health Plan?

These findings represent part of the reason citizens are so negative about government. The information gap makes it easy -- indeed, almost irresistible -- for political candidates to make something-for-nothing promises that, when they go unfulfilled, only adds to public cynicism.

Once elected, politicians are stuck with the kind of choices the Oregon Legislature faces now: Do legislators reduce services for seniors or funding for schools? Since voters aren't prepared for the idea that such tough choices are necessary, they conclude that their legislators are just incompetent.
Clever! He insinuates without explictly saying it that his opponents are a pack of liars, and that budget savings are impossible.

This state of affairs poses a virtually insuperable barrier to any kind of major reform of our tax system or array of public services. Any effort to raise taxes for any purpose runs into the same problem: "Can't you just prioritize and cut out the unimportant stuff?"

I don't purport to know exactly how we can ensure a fully informed electorate.
There is a becoming level of modesty. But I suspect your definition of "informed" would actually mean "mis-informed" based on this article.

People don't trust politicians or the news media, but that doesn't excuse them from at least trying to inform voters. The "balance-the-state-budget" project that Citizens for Oregon's Future has sponsored for high school students ("On a student budget," April 18) is an intriguing long-term strategy. And nonpartisan nonprofits that benefit from public dollars might try better educating their donors and clients.

At a minimum, we should do whatever it takes to make people more aware of how politicians spend our money. That might make people more sympathetic about the tough choices they are making -- and less receptive to "something-for-nothing" campaigns. A body politic with less cynicism and more honesty is itself a worthy goal and may ultimately lead to more effectively delivering the public's most desired services.

Adam Davis is a partner in the Portland opinion research firm of Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall.

At a minimum, Mr. Davis, we should do whatever it takes to make people aware of the entire state budget and the dishonest rhetoric of those paid to defend the wasteful practices of the spending class. Yes, let's all try for less cynicism and more honesty. You could even try it yourself.

What's a Good Measure of Government Results?

I've been disappointed at both the state Progress Board and even more the Portland/Multnomah Progress Board - both seem to have a strong position from which to push for government accountability and an increase in bang for the taxpayer buck, but both seem to have little taste for really driving that process.

I attribute that to the origin of both bodies. Both were born of the late 80s/early 90s desire to avoid the painful economic downturn Oregon had just gone through with the implosion of the wood products industry. The ruling class decided that a Strategic Plan (and better yet, a Strategic Planning Process) would save them, and the state Progress Board was made the keeper of that flame. That credulous view of Strategic Planning haunts both organizations, and keeps them mired in otherworldly abstraction.

Compared to what, you ask? If I were running things, here's what I'd have the state Progress Board do - some of which they are already doing; some they want to do; some they don't yet realize they should do:

1. Use consistent terminology that is both accessible to the public and precisely defined - i.e. say "measures" not "benchmarks" when the rest of the world says "measures"
   
2. Use common and accessible units of measure for outputs (or better yet outcomes) - i.e. dollars per student-hour of classroom instruction
   
3. Relentlessly purge measures of activity; replace with measures of outputs
4. Market the measures to the public, and spend at least as much time talking with consumers of services as with providers when defining measures
   
5. Make frequent apples-to-apples comparisons to other states, other providers, and the private sector
6. Create and maintan a wall between the hard numbers and the fuzzy strategic planning happy-talk
7. Distinguish between measures, estimates, and goals
8. Require agencies to report using "blessed" units of measure, or charge them for the conversion
9. Don't be afraid of an occasionally adversarial interaction with an agency
   

I wonder how many of these will be covered at the Oregon Public Performance Measurement Association's inaugural meeting next week?

Pdx in the Ascendant? Really?

In response to a posting here claiming that Portland is highly ranked on countless lists and is thus a wonderful place with little need for improvement, I wrote the following:

I recommend you read the classic book "How to Lie with Statistics" before you burst any buttons from chest-swelling pride. Many of the rankings you report are from organizations I have no reason to trust; others are directly contradicted by other established facts; still others are going to be determined by the unstated assumptions of the rankers.

To take a few: the Pearl District is also an example of taxpayer giveaways that subsidize rich yuppies. If the "Project for Public Spaces" is part of the lemming-like New Urbanist Movement, then of course they'll rate the Pearl highly - those are two aspects of the same religion.

And if Portland is the most child-friendly city, why is it also a city with few children, and that number plummeting?

As for the Tax Foundation, my initial look at their ranking system indicates they excludes fees - but Oregon rakes in $2 in fees for ever $1 in personal income tax revenue. I don't think the Tax Foundation's scoring system takes into account how distorted Oregon's fee-heavy revenue system is - and calling us "low tax" by ignoring 2/3rds of the state's take is dishonest to say the least.

But hey, how does Oregon rank on self-delusion among liberal cheerleaders? (Not you specifically, Chris - this is a common theme I've seen.) That's one ranking I'm sure we earned honestly.

Foundations and Gov't Accountability

I will be the first person to tell you how cynical I am regarding liberal foundations and their potentially pernicious effects on civic life. Certainly, the news about how a handful of liberal foundations managed to foist "campaign-finance reform" on an unsuspecting and unwilling public has only sharpened my suspicions.

Now, it looks like I will be -- in some small way -- the beneficiary of liberal foundation dollars. I am a confirmed attendee of the Oregon Public Performance Measurement Association's inaugural meeting.

Apparently, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is paying for the meeting. I hope that means nice sandwiches.

Come to find out, the Sloan Foundation has an entire program dedicated to increasing and improving the measurement of municipal government results. Where oh where have they been all my life? And can I trust them?

At least I'll get fed.

Egypt gets what the Democrats don't

From the 27-May-2005 Wall Street Journal:

Egyptian Finance Minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali could have been describing Argentina when he told us that under the traditional state system, "Government is a predator and the citizen is the prey. You pounce on him and you squeeze him all you can." Egypt wants to break with that tradition so as to attract capital and boost economic activity. Speaking like a Reagan supply-sider, Mr. Boutros-Ghali offered that any revenue loss under his tax plan to cut rates and provide an amnesty would be offset by higher growth and more taxpayers coming into the formal economy.

How well this describes Oregon's view of its taxpayers.

Daily 5

There are some remarkably good resources for managers on the web (as well as the expected crop of Dilbert-like crud).

The latest (for me) is something simple called the Daily Five Minutes. I like it.

What is Privacy?

Leave it to Bruce Schneier to send me this link to a definitive taxonomy of the concept of Privacy.

Brilliant.

Why I Love to Hate the OCPP

Before I thrash him here, I should say that I actually like Chuck Sheketoff. He's an excellent public speaker, which I like and admire. He's witty and thinks quickly on his feet. I recommended him to be part of a City Club of Portland panel, and he did very well. Sit next to him at dinner and you'll have a fine time.

But Chuck's political writing gets under my skin because his approach is inductive and emotional, and he uses that approach to gloss over otherwise troublesome facts. If you're looking to have your liberal prejudices reaffirmed, he's great. If you're looking to understand what's going on in detail, he's worse than useless.

Consider his recent [when I first wrote this] column regarding an apparently huge piece of corporate welfare, "Is Intel Bluffing?" - it's a masterpiece of the genre.

The public policy question is, should Intel get a huge property tax break on a planned multi-billion dollar investment? Useful related questions are, what will happen if they don't get the tax break, and what's the purpose of property taxes and of selective tax breaks? Is the (fairly common) practice of excusing very large capital investments from taxation a nod to the virtues of the Land Value Tax?

Sheketoff sidesteps all of that. To him, all taxes are just and good. There are no opportunity costs, and the hypothetical tax revenue is as good as in the bank - so the tax break "give[s] away $579 million of property taxes that are dedicated to funding public services."

Except of course it doesn't "give away" what it hasn't collected yet, and the whole question is, will Intel make a huge multi-billion dollar investment in Oregon if Oregon is planning to tax that investment to the tune of half a billion dollars? More pointedly, what are Intel's other options, and how likely is it that another location (Arizona, for example) might waive the tax if Oregon doesn't, and thus get the investment?

I think the whole subject of local governments competing with tax breaks and giveaways to lure jobs is fascinating. I'm convinced most of it is stupid; it's often a zero-sum game where tax dollars get spent to shuffle existing jobs between cities and states, and the firms that aren't threatening to move find that their taxes are being used to subsidize their competitors.

Here too, Sheketoff can't give us any facts, just innuendo mixed with irrelevant statistics.

[Postscript - Sheketoff won by getting the tax break killed, and Intel did NOT invest in Oregon. Perhaps that was his goal all along - to chase away those pesky jobs that make people independent of their government, and keep as many people unemployed and downtrodden as possible.]