By SEN. ROBERT MYERS
In my last article, I asked why we keep spending so much money. We often here that we need state services. But what we’re getting for our money? With all of the money that we’re spending, we should hope that we would at least be getting a lot of value for it. But that mostly does not appear to be the case.
“Services” is a rather amorphous word (which is part of the value of it). It can be used for a lot of things without a clear definition. For most of us, it means the things that we expect from government: public safety, road maintenance and other infrastructure, schools, natural resource management, etc. To that, we could probably add things like Medicaid, food stamps, childcare assistance, or other welfare programs. So do we believe that those things are being done well in Alaska?
I mentioned a lot of things in the introduction where Alaskans are not getting the quality that we should expect given the amount of money that we are spending on most of them. Education is probably the best example right now. When I graduated from high school in Fairbanks in 2001, Alaska was scoring roughly middle of the pack in national rankings. We then went on a tear of increasing education funding faster than inflation. The funding increased so much that, even after education funding falling behind inflation most of the last decade, we’re still spending roughly 30% more per student than we were when I was in school. What happened to our national rankings at that time? At the time we were increasing spending, we were falling further and further behind. By the time we hit the height of our per student spending in 2015, we were bottom of the barrel in almost every measure.
The problem is that, at the same time we were focusing on funding, most of the country was focused on policy. Florida passed the Reads Act in 2002, and now over 40 states have adopted it. Alabama created the follow on Numeracy Act for math, and seven states have adopted a version so far. These states are seeing growth in performance without significant growth in spending because of the focus on policy.
Other departments in Alaska are not performing well either, even with high state spending overall. We’re slow to process paperwork, with a huge error rate, for programs like Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps). Snow plowing and other road maintenance is poor. Our courts take years to process charges, and the vast majority are resolved through either dismissal or plea deal, not trial. Does that contribute to our high crime rates?
We have a huge deferred maintenance backlog. Permits for oil or mining are taking far too long to process and issue. We have enough problems inside of our foster care and child welfare system that the federal government is asking questions. If we have the highest rates of per capita spending in the country, why do we have so many problems inside of our government? Are these the services that we talk so much about needing?
The problem is the incentives that we’ve created. As Milton Friedman said, “Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.” That is a problem for government in general because the elected officials spending the money aren’t spending their own, but it goes double for us here in Alaska. In most cases, voters don’t have an incentive to see that the public money is being spent wisely because it’s not coming from the residents directly to begin with. Instead, the incentive is to find ways to tap into the government pie to get a piece, as we’ve already discussed with how many businesses and people have found ways to get government contracts or grants.
Both politicians and voters have an incentive to spend more and not care as much about the results. Quality and return on investment get ignored until it’s a crisis. So we’re always in crisis mode. We’re not careful about getting quality services with our public funds because most of us don’t have to pay for it.
The old saying is that, when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail. Policy is a tougher tool to use than money, and we’ve had so much money for decades that we just defaulted to that as the only tool. At the same time, our elected officials figured out that spending money was a great way to reelected in most cases. We’ve lost the creativity we need in both our elected officials and the people in the departments who run things to find the good policy we need to get the best results we can from our government. Then we have a group of people on the outside who balk at better functioning of government because what we might consider waste in the system is a paycheck for them.
So when the only tool you have is money, every problem becomes a question of the amount spent. But eventually there are diminishing returns on that spending. But the spending is the only thing that a significant portion of the people and elected officials care about; so we don’t fix the root causes and only talk the spending. The inevitable result is that we just increase the political divide in the state between those who want more spending on services and those who want less spending overall because they don’t believe that they’re getting services worth paying for.
Sen. Robert Myers: Why does Alaska look so good on paper, but perform so badly?
Senator Robert Myers was born in Fairbanks and spent much of his young childhood at the Salchaket Roadhouse, owned by his parents. He attended the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he studied philosophy, political science, and history. While in college, he drove for a tour company, sharing Alaska with countless visitors. He currently drives truck and travels the Dalton Highway (Haul Road) frequently. He ran for office because he wants an Alaska his children will choose to make their home down the road. When not working for his Senate District B, North Pole, he enjoys reading, history, board games, and spending time with his wife Dawna and his five kids.
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7 thoughts on “Sen. Robert Myers: Why do we spend so much money but have such poor quality services?”
So Rob, what are “we” going to do about it? I’ve missed ONE primary election since 1978; I’ve contributed $000s to conservative candidates and causes (only to watch many of them lose) for over 40 years; I’ve mounted the soapbox so often, most of my ‘friends’ won’t speak with me anymore. I think this generation of Alaskans will get the very Mamdani type of politicians they want and there appears little the rest of us can do about it.
Mayhaps you will produce another article with tangible potential solutions….
That’s my experience as well, voting, donating, talking to people, going door to door… I believe the cause of the dysfunction is the love of money. The quote the Good Book, “You cannot serve both God and mammon” and too many people love to spend other people’s money. By taking personal responsibility we can influence our families and a few friends but the problem is massive and can only be fixed with a big movement of returning to the God who created us and letting Him deal with our motivations.
When you produce nothing. Have zero competition. AND are expected to pay dues for a union that has no other goal other than making sure it stays exactly the way it is. How could there be any other outcome
Because of all the beaks that must be wetted before any funding trickles down to where the services are provided. all the democrat constituencies demand their cut up front.
After listing many bad symptoms, the article zeros in on the “problem” which is: “…the incentives that we’ve created”.
What specifically have “we” created” that the article might be referring to? What is the source of the bad “incentives”? I can think of 2 things we created: The Permanent Fund” which perpetually produces money that the state can use.
And also, we created the cancellation of the state income tax. Are those 2 things good or bad? I think they are very very good.
I have my own idea of what the “problem” is, and that is collective bargaining for government employees. We should get rid of it, and go back to free-market bargaining like some other states. But I think most people are afraid to talk about it, because they don’t want the unions to get mad at them.
Democrats control the Courts, Elections, Legislature, Republican Party and everything else that matters. Nothing happens unless they let it happen. Just admit it.
Time to look at this from another angle. For decades, we on the political right have mucked around a goals-based solution – elect more conservatives, elect more Republicans, spend less $$$, etc. What has that gotten us? “Bipartisan” coalitions in one or both houses of the legislature and the occasional democrat governor (Knowles, Walker). We have demonstrated for at least two decades that goals simply don’t work.
Solution? Try a systems-based solution. What system would I suggest? Pretty easy. Move control of the $$$ as close as humanly possible to whatever that money is supposed to be spent on.
Vouchers for education would be one example. So would Charter Schools, both of which move control closer to the parents and the kids. Health care $$$ would work the same way. Homelessness is a tougher nut to crack, though having the family in control of the homeless $$$ for family members would be an approach. Not much more difficult to do with whatever we’ve been trying. Should end up being much more effective and lasting. Cheers –