Zero-based budgeting could change culture of spending

The oddest ducks in the Hawaii Legislature are those who relish diving into the state budget.

You can appreciate the power and control earned from mastering the budget process, but understanding the difference in "Part D funds" as compared to interdepartmental transfer funds is akin to developing a knack for six-place long division.

The budget may be necessary, but, just like mammograms and colonoscopies are necessary, you don’t have to like it.

So it is interesting that Rep. Sylvia Luke, House Finance Committee chairwoman, and Rep. Aaron Ling Johanson, House GOP leader, are teaming up to study how to reform the state budget.

The plan is to take a serious pass at moving the state bureaucracy into a zero-based budget program.

The budget scheme, dubbed ZBB, was moved from private industry to government in 1970 by Jimmy Carter when he was governor of Georgia.

When Carter became president, he shifted it to the federal government, and when Ronald Reagan took over he cancelled ZBB.

But, modified forms are alive and well in state and city budgets.

The first version of ZBB called for every government program to justify everything every budget cycle, as in: "Why do you need this uniform? What is this office for? What is the purpose of this classroom?"

ZBB changed and became less cumbersome, but still amounted to an annual comparison of programs and services to measure priorities, goals and outcomes.

"There is a real desire not to do budgeting on autopilot; we think more and better access to information equals more effective government, and oversight," says Johanson, a former GOP White House appointee and former Treasury Department executive.

"There is recognition by Sylvia and I and others in leadership that we have a unique opportunity to do things different and change some of the culture here."

Johanson, a Yale grad, peppers his budget briefing with concerns about "the granularity of scale" in the information received, but what he and Luke are looking at could be a big change for the Legislature.

The pair is starting small with the plan to use the somewhat controversial Hawaii Community Development Authority — HCDA — as a test bed for preparing a budget in the ZBB format.

Johanson reports no push back from the HCDA, but then the reforms haven’t gone so far as to actually threaten the HCDA’s budget.

As a former upper-level federal bureaucrat, Johanson says he appreciates the tension between the executive branch that views all budget reviews as a threat and legislators suspicious that the bureaucracy never tells the whole story.

For Hawaii lawmakers, he says, the problem is even simpler: "Nobody ever looks at the base (budget)."

He hopes that if the new system actually takes hold, the Legislature will first ask, "Why do you need $20 million more here, or if this program is not mandated by law, why are we spending $5 million on it?"

It would be, as Johanson says, "a change in culture to make us more nimble."

The first pay-off so far is that Johanson and Luke are working on the project as part of their existing budget duties — and not asking for a $1 million study.

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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at. rborreca@staradvertiser.com.