THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECTReport Card: Wyoming FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT: C+ Wyoming has come a long way. Ten years ago, for example, cash management was essentially run out of the state treasurer's hip pocket; there was no meaningful oversight of any kind. Now, mandated by a law passed in 1996, the state utilizes top-quality investment advisers who are earning high returns and are held accountable for their results. When the 1990s started, Wyoming was at ground zero in financial reporting; now it has earned a Government Finance Officers Association certificate for the reports it produces. Not everything is perfect. Cost accounting is in its infancy here, and there are no clearly established policies for contracting with the private sector. Still, the transformation has been impressive. The real problem is the state's dependence on mineral revenues. With the price of oil down, budgets are tight. The traditional rainy day fund is empty. Legislators balanced the most recent budget by employing one-time fiscal gimmicks and spending down reserves intended for other purposes. Projecting forward, it is hard to see revenues matching expenditures. "If our revenues from minerals are dropping off and costs for education are going up," asks budget administrator Arthur Burgess, "where is the money coming from?" CAPITAL MANAGEMENT: C+ Last year, Wyoming instituted a new capital budgeting process patterned after the one used by Minnesota. It created a State Building Commission with five elected officials who oversee all capital budget requests. Agencies bring projects to the commission, which evaluates their requests and presents its own biennial budget request to the legislature, which sets priorities. In years past, state budget staff did this prioritizing. The new system appears to be working better than the old one, but it's still too early to make a definitive judgment. The staff of the new Building Commission has also started working with agencies to do regular assessments of existing state facilities. Unfortunately, says state Auditor Dave Ferrari, "there is no mechanism in place to fund repairs and maintenance and those requests compete with new construction and everything else." Though Governor Geringer has expressed some concerns about this, the legislature so far seems unworried about looming problems that result from deferred maintenance and repair needs. HUMAN RESOURCES: B- Wyoming's agencies have flexibility to reward employees for good work, and are encouraged to develop their own compensation policies that escape from one-size-fits-all rigidity. But this freedom would be a lot more useful if Wyoming were willing to put a little money into raises. What the state can do cheaply, it manages to do pretty well. In the early 1980s, Wyoming had about 1,400 job classifications. Now, it's down to about 550. The state is moving away from obsolete forms of testing, and does not place any limit on the number of applicants that agencies can consider hiring. After hiring takes place, personnel officials actually go back and survey a sampling of job-seekers to see how well they feel the system treated them. Wyoming is doing little workforce planning, largely because it doesn't have the staff. It has outsourced much of its workforce training to save money and give agencies greater choice. MANAGING FOR RESULTS: C Wyoming is headed in the right direction here; the idea of measuring results is being instituted all across state government. But the process is still at an early stage. While many agencies have a good idea of their objectives, they're weak at deriving measurable outputs and outcomes and developing data to chart progress. In fact, despite all the good intentions, there is currently no performance measurement information in the state budget. There has been little about it in the annual report, although more is being added and some agencies have such information in their own reports. The state Web site has minimal general results-oriented data. The Department of Audit and a handful of other agencies do provide such information, however. All executive-branch agencies are required to develop four-year strategic plans, revised every two years. New legislation requires legislative committees to review those plans, and provide feedback to the agencies. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: D+ A couple of years ago, Wyoming's central information technology department turned over a number of its top people to the individual state agencies in a decentralization effort. Since the IT department is funded largely by billing the agencies—and these people were some of its top billers—this move effectively crippled the functioning of the central office. The state does have a chief information officer, but he is responsible for strategic planning, not information technology planning. Though the position may be strengthened, right now the agencies control their own agendas. Most of Wyoming's information systems are functional, but provide little useful data to make broad-based management decisions. There is no data warehouse. The personnel information system is about to be replaced, and the new one should facilitate management in that area. The state does a reasonably good job at procuring new technology. However, training is not strong, and money is wasted because there's so little central coordination among agencies. While the agencies are required to do a cost-benefit analysis for new procurements, they are not held accountable for their decisions after the purchases are made. AVERAGE GRADE: C
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