OPEGA at 5

A recent article in the Portland Press-Herald shines light on why Maine has such an incredible management problem.  The people responsible for ensuring the proper use of state resources are barely interested in knowing if there’s a problem, and even less interested in fixing it.  That’s the very definition of mismanagement. 

This year the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, or OPEGA, will celebrate its 5th anniversary.  What should have been a rather non-controversial proposal – to evaluate our programs and hold government accountable – almost never saw the light of day.  For good managers and those who successfully navigate the private sector, the idea of evaluating what you’re doing to see if it is working is, at the very least, basic common sense.  Indeed, it is not too strong to say it is necessary for survival.  Resources are always precious and should never be wasted.  To put it plainly, the only way to know is to know – and that requires an evaluation system.

Despite heavy opposition by the majority party, OPEGA was born in 2002, though not implemented until 2005.  The office was intended to be our state government’s evaluation system.  After 5 years, however, it appears the evaluations aren’t going as planned, but it may not be the fault of OPEGA.

First, there is unnecessary confusion about what the office is supposed to be doing.  I can understand career politicians being worried about an office whose goal is to determine whether their pet projects and programs are actually performing.  If there answer is ‘no’, our politicians might get blamed. So OPEGA flails and flounders with little direction so as not to upset the status quo.

But even when there is actual progress made, such as the report detailing massive mismanagement of our Economic Development programs, our elected officials are reluctant to institute the suggested reforms.  According to the article, our lawmakers have followed just one-third of OPEGA’s proposals.  It begs the question, how can OPEGA accurately evaluate reforms that were never established?

The answer is, of course, it can’t.  That’s really been the goal of Maine’s career politicians within our state government: not to be audited, not to be evaluated, and not to be held accountable. 

We can’t afford this mismanagement any longer.  We need someone in the Blaine House who understands this and has experience successfully pursuing a different direction. 

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