Last updated on 2012.12.07
Yesterday, I posted on the Daugaard Administration's apparent prioritization of bigger state government over stronger support for education. Daugaard Administration Director of Policy and Communications Tony Venhuizen communicates this corrective response:
I emailed Cory to share with him that the numbers he is using to calculate FTE growth are inaccurate. I thought I would post the same information that I emailed him.
Here are the correct numbers:
The final Rounds budget, which was the FY11 budget that was adopted by the 2010 Legislature, budgeted 13,612.1 FTE.
http://legis.state.sd.us/sessions/2010/Bill.aspx?File=SB196ENR.htmThe FTE number in the proposed FY14 budget is 13,810.0.
If the FY14 budget is adopted, the increase over the three-year period would be 1.5%. That is an average annual increase during that period 0.5%.
That growth rate is less than one-third of the 4.6% rate that Cory calculated.
(I would comment that SD's population grew an estimated 1.2% in the single year from 2010-11. There is no census estimate yet for 2012, and of course not for 2013. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/46000.html)
The source of this mistake is understandable and I don't fault Cory for it.
The chart Cory looked to in the budget book refers to "Actual FY11" and "Recommended FY14" budgets. Each year includes an FTE number, and Cory calculated growth based on those two numbers.
(You can see it here:
http://bfm.sd.gov/budget/rec14/
SD_Total_Recommended_2014.pdf)The chart doesn't make this very clear, but those numbers are not comparable because the FY11 number is an "actual" number, and FY14 is a "recommended" budgeted number.
The difference? The FY14 number is the maximum number of FTE that the state is allowed to employ. The FY11 number is the actual number that were employed - which is always lower than the budgeted, maximum number. This is because there are always vacancies throughout the year due to turnover. For example, if I employ a person in my office, she would account for 1.0 budgeted FTE. But if that person resigns, and the position is vacant for three months before I hire a replacement, I would have only used 0.75 FTE for the year. The other 0.25 FTE was budgeted, but not actually used.
The difference is obvious if you look at the "Actual FY12" and "Budgeted FY13" columns. There was not an increase of almost 750 FTE last year - I think we can assume we would have heard about that if it had happened. Rather, it is because the FY10 and FY11 columns are measuring a different thing than the FY13 or FY14 columns.
I agree that this aspect of chart is confusing, but the point is that in order to compare year-to-year, one needs to look at the BUDGETED FY11 FTE number, not the ACTUAL FY11 FTE number. It is the Budgeted FY11 number that is comparable to the recommended FY14 number [Tony Venhuizen, comment, Madville Times, 2012.12.05].
To summarize: the number of full-time equivalents we pay for by the end of the fiscal year will inevitably be lower than the amount budgeted, due to job turnover. Governor Daugaard is recommending a state workforce that is only 1.5% larger than what his predecessor M. Michael Rounds recommended at the end of his term in 2010.
Now that's the kind of solid policy discussion I like to see in the comment section. Thank you, Mr. Venhuizen, for that informed policy perspective.
If my memory is correct, and it may not be, I think the Rounds administration persuaded the legislature to redefine FTE in about 2010 so that also affects comparative numbers for the last decade. Tony or someone in the administration might have access to those figures, but it seems we quit calling a number of certain types of salaried folks -- interns, etc. -- FTEs?
Whether FTEs are filled or not is of little consequence to taxpayers. It's the "budgeted" FTEs that matter. This is how the government pads its agency budgets - with "phantom FTEs". They budget for FTEs they may have no intention of filling just to have a little walking around money.
In my book if they are budgeting for "phantom FTEs" and using the money for whatever they're using it for, then truth in budgeting requires them to be counted as actual FTEs - because the money for those FTEs is spent. If they don't want "phantom FTEs" counted as FTEs then stop putting them in the budget as FTEs.
Be they "real" or "phantom", the main concern should be the growth of state government in the first place. Growing up in Pierre and having worked for several different agencies/offices in state government, I have seen first hand plenty of waste, inefficiency, and redundancy in so many situations. There are just too many workers - in most cases, what would be considered "middle-management" types; often, the actual "worker bees" are overworked, overloaded, and underpaid. There's plenty of nepotism (ask the two previous Govs about that) and friends-of-friends. I don't mean to disparage ALL state workers - there are many who work damn hard and do their jobs very well, but.... It would be interesting to see what an independent team of auditors would find in a study of our state government (yeah, like that's ever gonna happen).
Yes we need an Inspector General. Lots of other states have one, in one form or another.
I would like to see an independent team of auditors exam Pierre, as well as Sioux Falls, including the SF school district.
Bernie, might you be thinking of a change that I seem to recall redesignated my DSU graduate assistant position as not part of the state FTE count?
We need to require the budget bill to have complete details on where the money is going, what was spent last year, and increases in spending specifically highlighted. I could not believe the lack of transparency in our budget process, the first time I saw the final appropriations bill. The budget bills are akin to blank checks: http://legis.state.sd.us/sessions/2012/Bill.aspx?File=SB197ENR.htm
So Tony Venhuizen, Bernie Hunhoff, and Stace Nelson all walk into a blog...
The problem may not be transparency so much as a failure of the majority party to demand greater specificity and to look more deeply. The appropriation bill is a general plan, but there are more detailed layers underneath the budget. You may not want to be overly specific in the bill, but looking into the assumption underlying the bill would be called for.
I ran into this problem with the Rapid City Area Schools budgeting, which actually had far more detail than the state bill. It took me a while, but I figured out that a lot of subfunds had the same dollar figure budgeted every year for a decade. Mostly these were in the "Supplies" or "Travel" subfunds of every accounting category. When you looked at how much was spent out of these subfunds, it turned out that only a third to a half of that budgeted money was spent from most of those subfunds in every year that I looked at.
If you wanted to give the benefit of the doubt to the administration, you could conclude that they were consistently conservative in doling out the money. But why, then, repeatedly misallocate funds in budgeting? It made no sense. Were these overbudgeted subfunds little cookie jars that the school board would never bother to look into, and the administration could raid? Not really. The administration didn't raid these funds. They just were budgeted the same every year, and every year only a third of the budgeted figure would be used. I think it was just allocated initially by a formula and then inertia took over.
My problem with overallocating in subfunds is that it dilutes the board's (or Legislators') ability to set budget priorities.
Inspector general? Maybe like Inspector Clouseau?
The problem is the legislature ought be the check on an overreaching executive branch. The legislature owns the budget. But in single party South Dakota there is no such thing as a legislature that checks the executive branch. Instead, it rubber stamps the executive. Any inspector general would never have the putative power of a legislature and likely would merely be another patronage hire anyway. An inspector general is not a serious proposal.
Donald, if we didn't overallocate for state FTE's, we'd have more money available for certain expenditures, like state aid to education, right?
John: I agree, I have a hard time figuring out to whom we'd turn to pick a truly independent inspector general. It's kind of like a proposal I've heard for non-partisan redistricting: who would fairly appoint such a committee, and where would we find disinterested non-partisans to serve on the committee?
I used to sit in from time to time on Appropriation Committee meetings where Departments would go over their proposed budgets. It seemed to me that FTE padding was pretty common. I was most concerned with DENR budgets. Since a lot of their money comes from the federal government, DENR is supposed to have certain positions filled in order to meet their obligations under their Memorandums of Understanding. If DENR uses too much FTE padding, citizens can whistleblow to the feds. Maybe it works that way in Social Services budgets as well. But, yeah, for the part of the budget that is funded mostly by state funds, FTE padding takes away the Legislature's ability to set priorities.
Minnesota governor wants insurance equality for all domestic partners of state employees:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/12/07/politics/dayton-domestic-partner-benefits/
Ah, yes, but by how many FTE's did Rounds increase his staff? I think it was a WHOLE bunch.