Spending Caps Don’t Solve Project Management Problems

California is in trouble again. Running itself like a charity it spends based on public whim that drives vote buying legislators. My congresswoman, Sharon Runner, comments in her Runner Report about the most recent budget approach (click here for a subscription):

Our plan establishes a strict spending limit and creates a rainy day fund that will protect California’s taxpayers. We must put an end to government’s wasteful spending practices and not treat taxpayers as the Legislature’s own personal ATM machine.

Under this plan, the Legislature will be forced to prioritize to stay within the spending limit….Democrats have stated that we do not have a spending problem, but rather we have a revenue problem. That is simply not true.

I hate to say it but this isn’t the answer. Spending caps miss the point of deciding what the role of the government is and what strategies and projects they should spend money on. It’s the “easy” way out and simply doesn’t deal with the problem.

The argument shouldn’t be about whether it’s a revenue or spending problem but rather why we aren’t considering value and profit and project acceleration. I’m not advocating that the State operate like a business–it can’t. I am advocating that the State, like many counties have, establish a project management office (PMO) with a governance board responsible for selecting, eliminating, and prioritizing projects AND aligning them with State strategies. We are certainly in sad shape when the solution is simply to cap spending to force prioritization.

What do you think? Is it possible for a State governmental body to be an innovative user of a PMO? Why or why not?

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