There’s been a fair amount written lately about the problems with using performance measures in the budgeting process. And to be sure it’s not the easiest task in the world. But a vigorously optimistic message was delivered about that issue – with a focus on the success story in Ohio – from the panelists in an April 28 webinar from the Center for Accountability and Performance at the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA).

In setting the stage for the discussion, Katherne Willoughby, the Margaret Hughes and Robert T. Golden Bioskey Professor of Public Administration at the University of Georgia, described the ways in which performance-informed budgeting adds value to budgetary decision making. She also emphasized what it is not. “It’s not a replacement for the politics of the budgetary process . . . It’s not an algorithm or an automatic connection between performance and funding . . .Nor should it be an avenue to penalize agencies and programs for ‘poor’ performance.”

Panelist Marc Holzer, founding dean of the Rutgers University School of Public Affairs and Administration, and another well-known expert in performance measurement, credited Willoughby with her approach to the field in “understanding what it is practitioners are doing and what they need to do this,” which includes convincing elected officials that performance programs, save money, stretch resources and alleviate tax burdens and that “improved outcomes, especially in terms of quality, noticeably improve the lives of citizens.”

Kim Murnieks, the director of the Ohio Office of Budget and Management and the chief financial officer of that state for the past seven years, joined in by describing the successes of the highly transparent results-oriented funding approach that is transforming the Ohio budgeting process.

She noted that performance budgeting is not new in that state and that laws to encourage the practice first appeared in the 1990s, but the state’s dramatically increased use of data  and major efforts at assembling usable agency data sets in the last four years have created a current system that is transparent to residents and has been successful in driving program results.

The effort has included substantial agency training, the development of results-focused budgeting templates for new or expanded programs, embedding results in reporting and the importance of telling stories through a monthly spotlight on results evident in a program that is part of the state’s results-focused budgeting effort.

One result that is being achieved, for example, is Ohio’s desire to see more of its promising high school graduates choosing Ohio colleges rather than going out of state. To do this, the state began offering a $5,000 scholarship, renewable for four years for the top 5 percent of Ohio high school graduates who chose to stay in Ohio for higher education. 

The key question was whether the program achieved the desired goal. A baseline was set at 60 percent and the target for success was that figure would be increased to 65 percent, based on the scholarship offer. In fact, the percentage choosing Ohio colleges for the first cohort to receive the scholarship was 76 percent and the following year it jumped to 84 percent. 

With this idea – and the performance budgeting approach, an even bigger result is hoped for in the state.  “We know if students go to an Ohio college and graduate from an Ohio college. . . we do a good job of actually retaining them to live in Ohio past graduation, because that’s the ultimate goal,” she said. “We are in competition with other states for population long-term. We want those students to stay in Ohio, get their degrees in Ohio, and then live here and raise their families.”

The webinar, which was moderated by Richard Greene, principal at Barrett and Greene Inc., will be available here until May 29. It will remain available, following that period, to ASPA members.

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