Ellington

Of all the things the Legislature did this year, a budgeting strategy that could potentially save the state wasted dollars in the long-term and ensure taxpayer dollars fund successful programs emerged as a priority, albeit a quiet one, of the legislative leadership. It emerged in the form of a new committee in the House: the Performance Based Budgeting Committee.

Performance-based budgeting sounds like a lot of buzzwords, but at its essence, the idea is simple: ensure that taxpayer dollars are funding programs that have been proven to work and funding agency programs based upon that criteria. The process works like this: If a program has been proven to work to a degree now defined in Mississippi state law as "evidence-based," it deserves to be funded, based on its performance. 
 If a program cannot meet the evidence-based threshold, then it needs to soon. In a state where revenues have been lulling and budget shortfalls continue (the legislative leadership announced yesterday that fiscal-year 2017 estimates were $56.8 million over what originally planned for), prioritizing taxpayer dollars to programs that work makes even more sense.

Mississippi is not in a position to spend money frivolously, and legislative leaders recognize this. In 2014, they published a strategic plan called "Building a Better Mississippi" which served as an almost 30-page testimony to their "commitment to move this great state forward by holding state government accountable for maximizing the results that it achieves with your taxpayer dollars." A couple years later, things are changing. The state's corrections department is getting rid of an inmate program that is "paramilitary" in nature and not evidence-based and replacing it with a program that is. Not only is the new program evidence-based, but research shows it reduces recidivism, something that politicians from either side of the spectrum can support.

That's another potentially great thing about performance-based budgeting: the ability for parties to work across the aisle, regardless of a supermajority, to support good policy decisions. Performance-based budgeting is ultimately about creating policies and laws that actually work and are cost-effective for taxpayers. While parties can squabble about big or small government, every lawmaker should be able to agree that if we're going to fund a program, it needs to be proven to work. This type of budgeting is working in very red states (like New Mexico and Alaska), as well as very blue states (like Washington state and New York).

Performance-based budgeting was written into Mississippi state law in 1994, but it had not really taken off to influence policymaking or budgeting like it should until now. We applaud the legislative leadership's efforts to implement a strategy that has positively impacted policies in other states. And while it requires some lawmakers to meet all summer long, we think the efforts are well worth it to make sure in financially difficult times, our taxpayer dollars are being spent in the most evidence-based, cost-effective manner.