After reading Rubin’s Chapter 8 Budget Implementation and Control I would like to share a work-related example of the existing federal, state and local discretion-abuse-control cycle.
The Borough of Chambersburg has received federal transportation earmark funding allocated by Congressman Bill Shuster. Leftover money that was originally allocated to other county transportation projects has been offered to the Borough for use on state and/or local street improvement projects. While this type of funding is often criticized as pork, the reality is that most federal earmarks of this nature ultimately follow some type of administrative process that is supposed to ensure the money is spent appropriately. However, as noted by Rubin the discretion-abuse-control cycle can be undermined at various levels of the administrative process beyond direct control of the elected official.
In our case, the federal transportation earmark funding is administered locally by the PA Department of Transportation (PennDot) through the Franklin County Rural Planning Organization and the Transportation Improvement Program that they control. While an earmark project is not technically approved as part of the annual federal transportation funding budget controlled by the RPO it must be reviewed and processed according to federal regulations and PennDot criteria for environmental clearance, engineering/design, permitting, etc. At a recent RPO meeting, PennDot representatives discussed federal audit results that included no findings related to management of the federal funding distribution, project planning and implementation system they administer.
Ironically, elected officials can at times become frustrated with this type of system. When well managed and operated according to the regulations the system is extremely methodical and slow. As a result, it typically takes twice as long to plan a road improvement project than it does to build it. At any rate, elected officials that are not knowledgeable of the system and skilled at facilitating an earmark through the system can find themselves in a bind when the funding that was earmarked to their constituency is jeopardized by other political and budgetary pressures. Something that is prevalent during the current federal budget struggles.
As we have learned from Rubin, and our class discussions, our government is not lacking regulations and oversight. Following the regulations or ignoring them is up to those who are elected, appointed or hired to create policy, provide funding and administer programs.
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I would have to agree with your assessment. The problem has very little to do with regulations, its that those regulations are not followed correctly. As you point out, the money changes a lot of different hands and has the opportunity to be used for wrong behavior. this happened with the Coca Cola Co. they gave money to kill squads in South America. The company had no intention of helping them, and the organization never approved of the money, but when funding changes a lot of hands and gets filtered down its hard to follow everywhere it goes. And after all, you only need one bad person to hurt the process.
ReplyDeleteI guess I am wondering is there any way to ensure that elected official follow the rules???? I guess if a few don't follow the rules, the others loose competitive advantage if they do follow them. (this is my rational hahaha) I understand the overwhelmingness of the system but even if there was some method to check up on the funding to make someone accountable. (which I'm sure would only perpetuate the accounting gimmicks used )
ReplyDeleteI think Becky, there is a way to make sure that those elected officials follow the rules, and that is through being held accountable. It is imperative to ensure that those officials who say the money is going to be spent in a particular way follow through on their promises. I think that the two forces that play the largest role in this sort of accountability are the media and the electorate.
ReplyDeleteIf for instance, to use an example that Phil used, money was allocated for a road project and was spent on something else or put into a general fund, a functional media should see that and report on that. Chapter 8 highlights this when it explains how during the Vietnam War, the Pentagon used money allocated to them for a specific purpose, but chose to used it in a manner expressly forbidden by Congress.
The electorate must have longer memories. It seems that if something happens at the beginning of a term, there is plenty of time to make up for that wasteful spending or misuse of allocated monies. The thing I am not totally clear on in the chapter, is Rubin saying that elected officials have an “out” by the fact that as money becomes tighter, and discretion lessens for those who spend the money, they make mistakes by spending money in a fashion they would have before the money tightened? Essentially, they are doing business as usual and the money is no longer there, so they wrongly make a mistake, but it is not entirely their fault. Not that I completely disagree, but I am wondering If that is a correct assessment.
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ReplyDeleteYou’ve made some really good points there.
ReplyDeleteI looked on the web to learn more about the issue and found most people will
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