Issue Position: State Budget

Issue Position

The budget will continue to see challenges, and we need to institute major changes. For the past two years, I've advocated within the legislature to institute Results Based Accountability (RBA) and Zero-Based Budgeting. RBA is a well-known auditing program used in the non-profit and private sectors to use intended outcomes to steer budget-making decisions to reduce spending, without hurting our most vulnerable. Starting at the intended outcomes, RBA works backwards to ask "how much do we need to do the job?" instead of "how much can we get?", ensuring the state budgets line items based on data for intended outcomes. Coupled with zero-based budgeting (starting at zero with every budget and accounting for what we need, instead of building off a base from prior budgets), the state can reduce its spending by only paying for what we need, and for what produces intended results. I have the support for these methods, and will introduce legislation to move to RBA and zero-based budgeting.

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