Virginia’s largest county spent in excess of $1 billion more than needed to keep pace during the past four years with Fairfax County’s increases in population and Consumer Price Index, according to a recently released report by The Thomas Jefferson Institute.
This report made several reasonable recommendations, the most important being that an outside panel of experts should be established to review county government spending and become a permanent part of the budget process.
Then a fascinating thing took place: The government bureaucrats in the county reacted in textbook fashion by lashing out to defend themselves and discredit the Jefferson Institute’s budget analysis. That response was disappointing not only in its arrogant tone, but because it clearly misstated the Institute’s analysis and used faulty figures in an effort to defend Fairfax County’s overspending.
Instead of looking for ways to improve government operations to save money, the County Executive – in the middle of an election year that is, of itself, interesting – put his staff to work crafting an overly defensive six-page letter to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.
The Fairfax County staff rebuttal attacked the methodology used in the Jefferson Institute’s analysis. It stated that using the CPI-and-population formula as a benchmark for determining the need for an in-depth budget review is “simplistic” and “primitive.” This letter says a similarly simplistic analysis was made 15 years ago by the Blue Ribbon Commission on the Budget.
Simplistic and primitive? That earlier study, also known as the Cole Commission Report, was widely praised when given to the county.
The county staff letter also failed to mention that many highly respected business and government leaders participated in that earlier effort. For instance, those who used the same CPI-and-population formula as did the Jefferson Institute’s recent analysis included the former director of George Mason University’s Graduate Program in Economics and the former director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. These certainly aren’t “primitive” or “simplistic” economists. Such a characterization only shows how desperate this government staff seems to be to stop an outside review of spending.
Even more remarkable is that the county staff actually criticized the Jefferson Institute’s four-year-analysis by using budget figures over a seven-year period, starting in 2001 even though our analysis started in 2004. Using the 2001 starting point clearly distorted the facts.
For instance, it says student population increased by 3,500, when in reality the increase over four years was only 648 students. This is an error of 540 percent from a staff that says it needs no outside oversight!
Fairfax County’s rebuttal of the Jefferson Institute’s budget analysis never disputed that in four years, more than $1 billion had been spent over and beyond the CPI-population formula. All these bureaucrats could do was ridicule the formula first used by the highly respected Cole Commission. Then they used incorrect numbers to continue their rebuttal. (These documents are on the Jefferson Institute’s Web site: www.thomasjeffersoninst.org.)
Why is Fairfax County opposed to an outside group of experts reviewing its expenditures? Why was its staff compelled to challenge the Jefferson Institute’s budget analysis is such an unprofessional way?
How many hours were spent creating such a disappointing but revealing document?
Who asked for the county staff to write this response? Who is responsible for the flaws that are in it?
The answers to these questions would be most interesting.
Michael Thompson is president of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy.
