[nfbmi-talk] i'm not the only one

joe harcz Comcast joeharcz at comcast.net
Wed Jan 18 12:31:44 UTC 2012


Of course, MCB is the least transparent...

Brian Dickerson Gov. Snyder is missing a lot of his dashboard numbers  Detroit Free

Brian Dickerson

 

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If there's anything we know for sure about Rick Snyder, it's that the accountant-in-chief chosen to lead Michigan a little over a year ago is a numbers

guy -- the sort of manager who believes in punching his destination into a GPS and then checking the display every five minutes to calculate how fast he's

moving, when he can expect to arrive and what sort of mileage he's getting.

 

So it's curious that, after a year in which he seemed to bend state lawmakers almost effortlessly to his legislative agenda, Snyder has been slow to drag

the executive branch he oversees into the same metric mind-set.

 

The governor's obsession with measuring things was a hallmark of his first State of the State address last January, a speech in which he explicitly embraced

the dashboard metaphor and unveiled a website where constituents could measure his administration's performance by 21 different gauges.

 

Even those skeptical of Snyder's prescription for what ails Michigan found his commitment to transparency and accountability impressive.

 

The Center for Michigan, which critically analyzes elected officials' claims in its periodic "Truth Squad" reports, called Snyder's dashboard "a straightforward,

easy-to-use tool that gives Michigan residents some clues as to how their state is performing and holds public officials accountable."

 

Credit where it's due

 

In a column a few days after the dashboard made its online debut, I applauded Snyder's call for smaller units of government to establish their own dashboards.

 

Most municipalities hustled to do just that by the governor's Oct. 1 deadline. But today, three-and-a-half months later, only one of the 16 executive departments

Snyder directly oversees in Lansing has put the dashboards the governor promised online. Meanwhile, my Free Press colleague Paul Egan reported Monday,

less than a third of the 21 items Snyder pledged to track in his main Michigan dashboard have been updated with data collected since he took office.

 

A cynical person might wonder whether Snyder is as committed to holding his own subordinates responsible as he is to making elected officials outside Lansing

toe the line. Or maybe the early returns on his first year are so discouraging he's reluctant to share them publicly.

 

But the simple truth is that much of the data Snyder is betting will eventually vindicate his policies won't be available until after his first term is

over -- and even then it may be difficult to tell how much Snyder's own policies moved the needle.

 

Take, for example, infant mortality, which Snyder enshrined last year as a fundamental index of the state's physical health. The most recent numbers --

7.7 infant deaths per 1,000 live births -- are essentially unchanged from the previous year. But those numbers actually track the survival of babies born

during 2009, a full year before Snyder's election. It will be at least late 2014 before the state posts numbers describing the plight of babies born to

women who became pregnant in the first year of the Snyder era.

 

Time will tell

 

Does that mean it is pointless to track infant mortality? Of course not. Even though the correlation between babies' health and general prosperity is imperfect

-- infant mortality appears to decline in some economic recessions, for instance, possibly as a result of the reduced pollution that accompanies reduced

economic activity -- scientists consider it an important barometer of a society's medical, economic and political health. It's certainly worth asking what

Michigan can learn from the 38 states that boast lower rates of infant mortality.

 

Other statistics the Snyder administration plans to track online in 2012 -- the number of cases pending in the State Police's overburdened forensics lab,

for example, and the number of days it takes the state to pay invoices -- may provide more timely information about the impact of Snyder's management.

 

I suspect Snyder's commitment to metrics will only become more pronounced in the sophomore year that will get under way in earnest this week with his second

State of the State address.

 

But it is important to keep in mind that, unlike a real GPS, Michigan's dashboard may not tell us much about where the state is heading under Snyder until

long after he's relinquished the driver's seat to somebody else.

 

Contact Brian Dickerson: 313-222-6584 or

bdickerson at freepress.com

 



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