☆ Mike ter Maat: “accountable” state spending won’t make California “affordable”
Gov candidate Matt Mahan’s state spending plan champions dashboard accountability, but that won’t fix the cost of living, says Mike ter Maat, Editor of Broken. As long as politicians do what they are “built to do” which is “spend,” Californians’ real problem isn’t how well the state counts their money, but rather how much the state takes in the first place. An Opportunity Now exclusive reaction.
Given the typical range of politicians and politics here, the idea that California's problem is one of performance more than one of revenue is terrific. Indeed, if Mahan continues championing accountability as a gatekeeper to further spending, Californians would be better for it.
Sacramento has been all too comfortable with accelerating spending while turning a blind eye toward ineptitude, corruption and other flavors of ineffectiveness. In this zoomed-out context, anything else would be preferable . . . and Mahan's attitude is, if nothing else, something else.
Unfortunately, Mahan's basic premise is wrong. California's problem actually is one of revenue - not too little but too much. California will not succeed until it dramatically cuts spending.
The government's access to funding over the years has been nearly limitless. While there have been times when some politicians wanted more than the more-than-last-year they were getting, at no point has there been a serious financial throttle.
This is where the incentive system for which Mahan pines breaks down. No number of Harvard Business School metrics seminars will stop politicians from doing what politicians are built to do: spend.
Put differently, you cannot solve a strategic problem with improved tactics. The strategic question is not how well our current spending is programmatically performing, but how much spending is justified relative to what good that money would do in the pockets of Californians themselves.
America’s economic problem is one of affordability. It takes real hutzpah to tell people living in one of the most expensive places in the nation that you care about the cost of their living and you are going to get busy analyzing what to do with their money.
Californians must carpe the diem to tell elected officials that while accountability gives us thrills it won’t pay the bills. Analyze this.
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