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If so, you would also be happy to pay $675 for a toilet seat. In the early 1960s the Defence department adapted the latest
budgeting craze sometimes called Planned Program Budgeting (PPB). The idea was
to back off traditional line items in the budget in favour of splendidly broad
objectives. This not only enabled the
Americans to pretend that the Vietnam
War had a purpose, but more importantly, to rob the public blind. These were the glory days
of sterling toilet seats and nails that cost more
than their weight in gold.
There have been many variants, sometimes called Goal
Oriented Budgeting, (GOB), Managing for Results (MFR) New Public Management
(NPM) Program Assessment Rating Tool
(PART) and Planning programming, budgeting systems (PPBS). These are useful tools for burglarizing the government because in
perusing the budget it is hard to trace exactly how the money is spent. If 100 million dollars is attributed for the Army Band, whether
it is for toilet seats or tubas, is much
harder to trace if there are no tuba or toilet seat line items.
If you visit Vancouver’s web site and tip toe around the
info-graphics and duck every time they fire a cliché at you, here is what you
will see:
Council has supported the City’s mission “to create a great
city of communities that cares about its people, its environment, and the
opportunities to live, work and prosper,” by aligning spending with programs
that support Vancouver’s people, environment, and prosperity. Key plans that represent these priorities
inform the budget direction. Public consultation conducted during City’s Goal: Cultivate and sustain vibrant, creative, safe and
caring communities for the wide diversity of individuals and families who live
in, work in and visit Vancouver
Did you know...Vancouver consistently ranks as one of the
Most Livable Cities in the World?
If in your quest for knowledge you actually want to know about something like transportation you are referred to:
If you want the Nitti Gritty, to coin a phrase, you can
download the Transportation Plan 2040 adopted October 31, 2012..
Browsing through the pictures eventually, you think you are
about to step ashore in the land of the Truly
Something Substantial (TSS). Entitled “Policies
and Actions and Details” you learn this:
Action
M 1.1.1. Continue to optimize network operations such as signal
timings and rush-hour parking regulations to manage congestion while supporting other plan goals.
OR
M 2.2. Support strategies that reduce the need for parking
M 2.2.4. Create a developer-friendly, Council-endorsed
toolkit to assist developers and staff in developing transportation management strategies for new development.
Our Glorious Leader's Great Leap Forward
The Vancouver Sun luxuriated in this collection of pictures, pie
charts, cliches and bull shit this way:
It is
an annual budget the like of which Vancouver residents have never seen.
Where
previous budgets consisted of row after row of numbers, the 2013 document reads
more like a book. Its 172 pages are filled with colourful pie charts, tables of
figures, and a neatly organized narrative, devoid of banker’s jargon, outlining
the projects and services on which residents’ money will be spent.
This
method of budget reporting is a “massive leap forward” in public accountability
and transparency, according to Mayor Gregor Robertson and his team of Vision
councillors, who gave majority assent Tuesday to the final $1.148-billion
operating and $258-million capital budget.
Residents
will see a 2.8-per-cent increase to property taxes to help pay *****
The Vancouver Province sounded incredulous:
"On Wednesday, NPA councillors George Affleck and Elizabeth Ball - who were elected, like all councillors, largely to examine city spending for taxpayers - were told by city manager Penny Ballem that on the advice of an outside consultant they would no longer receive line-item details on how city hall is spending public money. Ballem, showing contempt for elected officials, said all of us have to "trust staff."
Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/Citizens+should+fight+vision+budget+secrecy/7348913/story.html#ixzz2FGvilXVj
Maybe Council has to trust staff because the Mother Superior says so but I don't trust them and I certainly don't trust her.
The Budget That None Dare Speak its Name
In his recent book, “Program Budgeting and the Performance Movement, The Elusive Quest for Efficiency in Government” (Georgetown University Press 2011 ) William F. West writes of the various iterations of program budgeting systems as “an unsuccessful exercise in managerialism.” Its recrudescence in the US, “has encountered the same obstacles that led to its widespread abandonment three decades ago.”
"On Wednesday, NPA councillors George Affleck and Elizabeth Ball - who were elected, like all councillors, largely to examine city spending for taxpayers - were told by city manager Penny Ballem that on the advice of an outside consultant they would no longer receive line-item details on how city hall is spending public money. Ballem, showing contempt for elected officials, said all of us have to "trust staff."
Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/Citizens+should+fight+vision+budget+secrecy/7348913/story.html#ixzz2FGvilXVj
Maybe Council has to trust staff because the Mother Superior says so but I don't trust them and I certainly don't trust her.
The Budget That None Dare Speak its Name
In his recent book, “Program Budgeting and the Performance Movement, The Elusive Quest for Efficiency in Government” (Georgetown University Press 2011 ) William F. West writes of the various iterations of program budgeting systems as “an unsuccessful exercise in managerialism.” Its recrudescence in the US, “has encountered the same obstacles that led to its widespread abandonment three decades ago.”
Secretary of Defence McNamara was drawn to PPB because it
promised a more efficient allocation of resources and responsibilities among weapons systems and operational units. The elaborate process linked planning with
budgeting by evaluating and comparing activities in terms of the
purposes they served. West observes, “Accordingly, it
was also a tool whereby McNamara hoped to centralize his control over services
that had traditionally enjoyed a good deal of autonomy.”
President Johnson
extended the program throughout the entire US government. The extension was terminated
after little more than five years because to be blunt, it was a flop. PPB survived only in the Department of Defence during the
next 30 years. However, it emerged in the Department of Homeland Security under
Present George W Bush.
It has not been successful whether described as PPS or any other acronym. According to West, “the
most important goals cannot be realized ." It is described as a
management fad that was discarded. White
also explains that it is an extremely expensive system to maintain in terms of
resource demand. He says even more importantly are the constraints associated
with decentralized and pluralistic political environment of public
administration.
Ironically, the
evolution of PPB at the Department of Defence suggests that formal systems of planning
and assessment that seek to be comprehensive and that are synchronized with the
annual budget cycle may in fact undermine the kind of selective analysis that
can be beneficial.
Coming back to our town, the recent move to try to centralize community centre administration by doing away with local Community Centre Associations (after relieving them of the money they raised) is a
predictable result of MFR or PPB or PPS whatever they choose to call it.
The City is now being run by a physician who is out of her depth and social media experts and graphics artists who may well be top in their fields, but rank at the bottom of
the class when it comes to public administration.
That happened because fools like me and a few of you voted for VISION on the theory that they could not be worse than the last bunch.
That happened because fools like me and a few of you voted for VISION on the theory that they could not be worse than the last bunch.
