Two Democratic state senators — both primary election rivals for Vermont governor– disagreed sharply Wednesday over a plan to reconcile differences in the House and Senate Challenges for Change legislation.
The Challenges package is designed to save money by streamlining and altering state government’s approach to delivering services. However, since the Challenges arrived from the House, senators have been bogged down in dense semantic debate over the bill. Semantics grew even denser Wednesday.
With a little more than a week remaining in the legislative session, Sen. Susan Bartlett, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and an avid proponent of the state’s government reorganization plan, unveiled a new Challenges proposal that evoked a sharp rebuke from Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, D-Windham.
“Creative Practice Initiative Approach,” template
“Creative Practice Initiative Approach,” Corrections example
Both senators are running for governor in a five-way Democratic primary.
Though Shumlin has been supportive of the government restructuring plan, he openly chided Bartlett for instigating this latest plot twist in the three-month evolution of the Challenges drama.
Shumlin, who saw the draft for Bartlett’s “Creative Practice Initiative Approach” for the first time Wednesday afternoon, reproached her for presenting the half-page outline with few concrete details for resolving an $18 million Challenges savings shortfall. (Bartlett had also neglected to make the House leadership privy to the draft.)
Bartlett’s initiative is a list of seven vaguely worded steps that she said will solve the remaining $18 million hole in the government restructuring effort. She called the initiative a “template” that can be used to replicate cost-savings programs across state government. Though she cited several exemplary programs as prototypes, such as community justice programs, she did not indicate how the template might have been applied to those services.
“It’ll be more than a template before we get done with it,” Bartlett said. “We’re just starting to play with this. We’ve got to make structural changes.”
“Can you pass me what you’re smoking, because I’m just not getting it,” Shumlin quipped at one point, later adding: “We’re trying to pass this out in six legislative days, and we’re still having this conversation? Somehow I’m not getting the same high you’re getting.”
Though Shumlin has been supportive of the government restructuring plan, he openly chided Bartlett for instigating this latest plot twist in the three-month evolution of the Challenges drama.
“Can you pass me what you’re smoking, because I’m just not getting it,” Shumlin quipped at one point, later adding: “We’re trying to pass this out in six legislative days, and we’re still having this conversation? Somehow I’m not getting the same high you’re getting.”
When asked about Shumlin’s reaction, Bartlett feigned concern about her primary campaign rival’s misgivings about the Challenges. “I’m really upset,” she remarked, tongue-in-cheek, in an interview afterward. “If Peter has a better way to come up with $30 million in Challenges (savings), everybody here is all ears.”
Bartlett painted Shumlin as a naysayer who won’t get with the Challenges program. “There are lots of ‘you can’ts, you can’ts,’” she said. “We’ve gotta have some ‘you cans, you cans.’”
But at least with the roll out of her own proposal, it wasn’t evident that even Bartlett, who is one of the architects of the Challenges, had found a solution to the conundrum — (in spite of her insistence that the Senate could actually find a whopping $40 million in savings total under her plan, which uses the House Challenges reductions of $20 million as a baseline.)
One major discrepancy between the successful “outcome-based” programs she cites as examples and her new Challenges proposal, comes down to the organizing principles behind the initiatives. Bartlett’s Approach plan calls for a bidding process, while the model services she touts were planned and executed by state agencies or organizations that were given adequate funding and support for implementation.
The Douglas administration pitched a similar bidding concept for the regional development corporations — Bartlett’s plan, however, applies the RFP approach across human service programs. During the committee meeting, five administration officials, including Rob Hofmann, secretary of the Agency of Human Services, and Tom Evslin, the governor’s point person on the Challenges, were on hand to offer support for Bartlett’s proposal.
The second main difference between the Approach outlined by Bartlett and the status quo is funding. Challenges comes with a $38 million pricetag, and though the House identified $20 million in reductions in state spending on government programs to pay for it, no one knows how much of the remaining tab in-house and outside agencies will be picking up. (The Douglas administration came up with $31 million in reductions, many of which the House wouldn’t accept.)
Shumlin took issue with Bartlett’s assumption that regional nonprofit agencies serving down-and-out Vermonters, such as community mental health and substance abuse programs, will be able to pay their employees less than they do already.
“The (designated agencies) aren’t talking about their clients, and educators aren’t talking about the kids,” Bartlett said. Instead, they are focused on the reduction numbers they have been handed through the Challenges, she said. “You get amazing accountability when you do outcome-based anything.”
“We’re not going to be able to squeeze any more money out of their wages,” Shumlin said. “I don’t envision people coming together to bid on contracts when they’re not getting paid very much to do the work they’re doing already.”
Bartlett countered that the designated agencies – the nonprofits that provide programs for developmentally disabled and mentally ill Vermonters – “cannot envision how they can do this without cuts.”
“The (designated agencies) aren’t talking about their clients, and educators aren’t talking about the kids,” Bartlett said. Instead, they are focused on the reduction numbers they have been handed through the Challenges, she said. “You get amazing accountability when you do outcome-based anything.”
Bartlett insists the word “cuts” ought to be stricken from lawmakers language when they talk about the Challenges. She has said repeatedly that she wants to get away from traditional budgeting to a process that is focused on the big questions: “What are the outcomes? Who is the client? How do you measure it?”
Her Approach is designed to address questions about how the Challenges will be applied to regional nonprofit organizations that receive state funding to provide economic and municipal planning services, mental health, developmental disability and substance abuse programs and community support organizations for nonviolent offenders.
The answer, as spelled out in the Approach, boils down to treating such entities much the same way as private businesses. Bartlett’s proposal requires the organizations to bid on requests for a proposal drawn up by state agencies. “Review boards,” comprised of legislative and executive branch appointees, would select proposals based on four criteria.
Shumlin, however, said contracting out mental health and substance abuse programs for nonviolent offenders released from prisons won’t work if the state doesn’t allocate enough money.
“There is a disconnect between the rhetoric and our ability to deliver the services,” Shumlin said.
