Budget and finance

With limited time to put together a budget and push cuts and new revenue proposals through the legislative process, policymakers need a team with the ability to go beyond individual line-items, as well as a knowledge of your priorities and a national perspective on budget savings and fiscal improvement.

Public Works offers a full range of fiscal and budget-related services. We have designed budget plans across the nation that improve efficiency and service delivery to produce savings, as well as identifying those areas that can best be cut outright.

• Public Works has identified billions of dollars in savings for state governments through performance reviews - in-depth examinations of programs, policies, and performance to save tax dollars and improve government efficiency.
  
  
  • In New Mexico, Public Works oversaw a comprehensive, two-phase statewide performance review that identified approximately $100 million in annual savings. Governor Bill Richardson described this effort in his forward to the report on the second phase of the New Mexico performance review:
    

    "In August 2003, I released Moving New Mexico Forward. It was the first of a two-phase performance review and contained 92 recommendations covering a wide range of ideas for saving money, increasing efficiency, collecting delinquent taxes, and improving customer service throughout state government. I am pleased to release the second-phase report, Moving New Mexico Forward: FURTHER ALONG with an additional 41 recommendations.
    

    "While this new report suggests significant savings - more than $65 million over five years - the focus this time is more long-term, focusing on ways to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of state government and improve the results for our customers, the citizens of New Mexico."
    

    • To learn more about the New Mexico statewide performance review, click here.
      
      
  • The Arkansas legislature retained Public Works to conduct a performance review of the Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) after ADH announced that a decline in revenue forced him to cut $5.3 million from the agency's budget, lay off 38 employees and eliminate 69 vacant positions. Public Works found that ADH had problems with data collection and tracking; for example, the agency tracks the number of child screenings it does annually, but it did not know how many children go without it. That means the agency could not determine how many uninsured children fall through the cracks and could not develop a way to target them. Nearly half of the 1,000 ADH employees who responded to a Public Works survey said they did not understand how decisions were made and were not involved in decisions that affect them. Public Works offered a new organizational structure that condenses the department's seven existing divisions into three to make clear the lines of accountability and to streamline decision-making. Public Works developed an in-depth implementation plan based upon our review of ADH operations and an identification of national best practices. The work resulted in bi-partisan political support, agency ownership of the report, and favorable media coverage. Read final report.
    
    
  • The California Student Aid Commission (CSAC) was directed by the California legislature to conduct a performance review of CSAC's auxiliary institution, EDFUND, the second largest student loan guarantee agency in the United States. Working under severe time constraints and difficult cooperation issues between CSAC and EDFUND, Public Works completed a performance review that recommended tightening EDFUND's budgeting and performance compensation practices, as well as closer oversight by the Commission of EDFUND operations. This effort ultimately resulted in the Commission's decision to restructure the EDFUND board of directors and implement many of the recommended fiscal reforms.
    
    
• Public Works has developed budget proposals for states across the country that successfully addressed current fiscal and political realities. For example, the Arizona Republic observed that Governor Janet Napolitano's budget plan "includes strategies to erase the $400 million hole in this year's budget as well as a possible $1 billion shortfall that Arizona's next governor is expected to inherit." (09/24/02). The Republic later noted her budget plan "that mixes spending cuts and new revenues closely matches the pulse of voters polled." (10/31/02)
  
  
• Public Works has helped pioneer "measuring outcomes" in the complicated area of improving children's health, safety and well-being. We also helped develop an innovative approach to budgeting - tracking funding streams across agency lines and governmental levels to identify what's really being spent in total on children's services. The final step of outcome measurement and application is a path-breaking "children's investment strategy" that puts public money where the results are. To see how these work in practice, click here.
  
  
• Public Works also has undertaken numerous projects with government agencies to save money and increase efficiency and service delivery.
  
  
  • For example, Public Works recommended detailed management changes to the West Virginia State Treasurer's Office to enable it to implement policy initiatives more efficiently and effectively.
    
    
  • In another project, the California Department of Social Services retained Public Works to research welfare sanction policies and recommend whether a stricter policy was needed to encourage compliance and participation. There had been disagreement amongst the legislature, the Department, and the Governor's Office as to how to treat non-compliant TANF participants; Public Works' recommendations threaded a difficult policy and political needle between competing positions. Public Works determined that for certain welfare recipients, tougher sanctions, coupled with adequate services, could have a positive effect on recipient behavior and program compliance. We also determined that tougher sanctions were not called for as to others - and we found that, in general, the sanctions were pointless unless the state funded efforts to help address the reasons underlying non-willful noncompliance. The proper application of sanctions could reduce state cash payments between $17 million to $40 million annually, enabling the state to shift resources spent on noncompliant recipients to increased investment in programs that some recipients needed to boost their compliance.
    
    
• If you want to know more about Public Works, please contact us today.