CHICAGO – Do any state legislators really have a clue when it comes to prioritizing projects for stimulus package funding? There is a lot of money coming to every state from a federal funding stimulus package. How are they going to spend it?

There are many people coming out of the woodwork with reasons that their agency or organization needs more money. To them, they all have critical items they think must be funded with the stimulus money. Nothing else matters. It’s free money!

There are also some people who think their individual business should get a couple million dollars so they can go to the next level. Everyone should get a million or two.

Wake-Up Call

Sorry to all those who think the federal government is the “goose that just laid the golden egg” in everyone’s backyard.

There are many more requests than there are available funds. In working with my local state senator of Illinois (John Noland), I have observed that he’s very concerned about the distribution of the money available. I sincerely hope every legislator takes his or her job as seriously as Noland does.

The question on his mind that should be on the mind of every state legislator in every state accepting stimulus money is this: “How do we distribute this to get the most good out of this one-time ‘goose’ of the funding mechanism?” First, you have to take into consideration that it’s a one-time handout or bailout.

You can’t permanently expand a service or hire an employee based on this one-time gift. You need to spend it wisely and rise above all the noise that’s being created by the agencies, organizations and individual lobbyists who are trying to tell their legislator that they must fund this endeavor or initiative that is paramount to some agency’s survival.

What do we cut? That question seems to be on the minds of a lot of local government bodies when it comes to creating next year’s budgets. Some can’t come to grips with the realities of what they were elected for: to represent the people and be accountable to them for fiduciary responsibility.

You have to make some serious decisions about what can be left in a budget and what has to be cut. Nothing is sacred and laying off people may be the only option left. Many municipalities are facing this right now.

Creating Some Type of Prioritization Process

For every state agency, municipality and any other local government or agency that gets funded by state and local funds, they should be reviewed by some type of objective process before they just get handed a clump of money.

Requests for funding projects have to be reviewed and determined for their impact to the community and legislative district. With two different funding mechanisms that must be utilized for maximum benefit (the stimulus package and the state’s capital funding program), a structured approach is needed and should be adopted by every legislative office.

First, a project should be defined as beneficial using the ICARE^© model:

1. Individual organization or group
2. Community (municipality)
3. Area (several municipalities)
4. Region (the full legislative district)
5. Everyone in the state

Once that initial benefit analysis is established, a secondary list can be applied to prioritize each project and rank them within that level of ICARE:

1. Critical
2. Necessary
3. Optimal

The three-level ranking approach below provides a second sorting refinement to prioritize projects and afford a realistic gauge about what should be best for individual organizations, communities, areas (multiple communities) and regions (full legislative district).

1. Critical is defined as public safety, public health, infrastructure and providing critical services that should not be cut.
2. Necessary is defined as providing necessary services.
3. Optimal is defined as new programs, benefits or expansion of services.

This provides a structured approach to analyzing where limited funding can best be applied and utilized for the greater good of the district and the state. There needs to be long-term investments that create a broad residual value as the primary intent rather than short-term expenses that benefit only a narrow group.

In these financial times, just keeping the same level of funding for every agency may be considered a great accomplishment. No one should expect an automatic increase in funding.

You’ll hopefully share this with your state representative or state senator as I’m sure they would be eager to look for objective ways to sort through potential projects. Not every legislator is named Jimmy Dean. Not everyone has a primary focus on pork projects for the stimulus package.

As Sen. Noland stated: “In this era of transparency, I believe everyone will be asking how we came to these conclusions.”

Carlinism: When there is no objective yardstick to measure and prioritize project funding, it always becomes a perception of pork.

James Carlini is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University. He is also president of Carlini & Associates. Carlini can be reached at james.carlini@sbcglobal.net or 773-370-1888.
Click here for Carlini’s full biography.