I read in the Nevada Appeal that Gov. Gibbons wants to develop zero-based budgeting as he prepares to submit his budget to the 2011 legislative session. His staff will need to retrain all the budget officers in the various departments throughout state government. Very difficult.
When I worked in Michigan years ago, the governor decided to move the state to a zero-based budgeting system. He hired an outside consulting firm to do the staff training and revise all of the state's budget documents. Two years later, thousands of hours of staff time, hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting costs, and volatile arguments with the legislative finance committees, the governor gave up. The Legislature thought their budget system was fine.
Those who are responsible for developing department budgets know how to put budget documents together in ways that are generally consistent with revenues and with public expectations. Departments are given budget guidelines - above, at and below previous years - for developing current budgets. State budgets are also complex because of the infusion of federal funds. Some Nevada departments are almost totally supported by federal dollars; the education, transportation and human services departments, for example, are heavily subsidized by federal funds.
Budgets are built on assumptions. Anyone who has done this knows how rigorous the process is. The Nevada Legislature appropriates all funds (including federal funds) for public services. The executive budget (composed of all the state departments) is usually reconciled with the Legislature's fiscal analyses. They're almost always within a few points of each other. In recent years this has not been the case.
What worries me about Gibbons' zero-based budgeting proposal is that it may assume "zeroing out" budgets the governor doesn't like (focusing on the Sage Commission recommendations) and ignoring the Legislature. Certainly not wise.
The Gibbons administration has had a history of almost exclusively cutting budgets to solve economic problems. The governor seeks to fulfill an ideological desire to make government smaller without a corresponding effort to improve/develop government services. "Smaller government" is not necessarily more effective government.
Whoever becomes governor in 2011 needs to understand that we must do two things at the same time: Review/expand the revenue base (fair taxation/job creation/new industry development) and manage state fiscal expenditures based on carefully thought-out assumptions. One without the other is of little value.
Such an outcome depends on working partnerships with the executive office, the Legislature and the federal government. There is little doubt that we will all have to sacrifice and that we must all work together.
• Eugene Paslov is a board member of the Davidson Academy at the University of Nevada, Reno and the former Nevada state superintendent of schools.