For today’s Detroit News, Rick wrote an op-ed about his plan to reform Lansing’s broken government using “Value For Money Budgeting”.

Here is Rick’s op-ed:

When you and your family decide to purchase a car, there are a number of considerations to weigh such as safety, comfort, and reliability when choosing a car that you can afford and that best meets your needs. Imagine if, instead, a committee of used car dealers hand you the keys to a beat-up clunker, charge you whatever they feel they can get away with and send you on your way.

Then, they don’t pay attention all year long when you complain that your car isn’t running properly, and they refuse to provide the services you paid for.

That’s essentially how the politicians in Lansing treat the citizens of Michigan when they write the state budget. They take last year’s failed plan and simply adjust it based on what the loudest lobbyists and special interests are screaming about this year. The result is a state spending plan disconnected from the needs of Michigan and a budget process that doesn’t offer much incentive for producing better results.

I propose something different — something I call “value for money” budgeting, in which Michiganians are consulted for their budget priorities and measurements are put in place so citizens can see clearly whether they got what they paid for. The citizens of Michigan ought to have the first say in how their tax dollars are spent, and they deserve to see clearly whether they received tangible value for their taxpayer money.

It starts by taking the budget-writing process out of Lansing’s backrooms and putting it into Michigan communities. I’m confident that if we ask the citizens of Michigan what their budget priorities are, immediately our state budget will look different, and immediately it will be improved. In these tough economic times, all families are having to prioritize as they cut back. State government should follow their lead.

Then, with the citizens’ priorities, we can craft a budget by finding the most effective and efficient strategies to get results. Sometimes that will mean looking outside of state government to see if a private entity can provide what the people want more effectively and for lesser cost. Sometimes it will mean dramatically cutting back the size of state government departments, or consolidating them. As we’re dealing with declining revenues, chronic budget deficits and growing liabilities, we have no choice but to put everything on the table.

Here’s another change to our budget process needs: We need multi-year budgeting rather than the short-sighted year-to-year cycle we suffer through now. It’s time for a budget cycle that allows our local school districts and cities to properly plan, rather than waiting months after their fiscal year starts to find out how much money the state is going to provide. State government should take a longer view and plan for several years, just like families and businesses do. We can re-evaluate and adjust yearly, while planning more effectively for our longer-term goals.

The most important element of value-for-money budgeting is setting real measures to show whether tax dollars are paying for what was intended, and then reporting back to the citizens so they can hold government accountable. This is the best way to spend limited resources wisely and put state government on a course of continuous improvement and innovation.

This is a budget approach that is proven to work. Washington State used it to reduce a $2.4 billion deficit without raising taxes in 2002. Iowa’s Department of Transportation saved $35 million annually through a comprehensive review of all services and management. And Charlotte, N.C., used it to consolidate 26 departments into nine and reduce the municipal workforce by 8 percent, all while citizen surveys indicated greater than 80 percent approval of nearly all services.

The truth is, value for money budgeting is a simple concept. The only reason it hasn’t been put in place in Michigan already is a lack of leadership in Lansing. Politicians don’t have the will, or the ability, to place the needs of our state ahead of the desires of special interests. But I do.

I think that when you get the keys to your new family car, you should be able to drive a vehicle off the lot that your family is satisfied with. And if something goes wrong, you ought to be able to hold the dealership accountable. It’s time for us to make our state budget a little more like that.