There They Go Again   The Fairfax County staff used every trick in the book rebutting the Thomas Jefferson Institute's analysis of the county budget, but there's no hiding the fact that spending needs outside oversight.   At a time when government budgets are hurting, you would think that municipalities would welcome outside help. But not Fairfax County. The county's staff recently lashed out against an independent budget analysis that dared to criticize the government’s overall spending during the previous four years.   A review of the staff rebuttal is instructive, and discouraging, to all who want to see reform in government spending.   The Thomas Jefferson Institute recently released its Seventh annual Fairfax County Budget Analysis. That report showed that Virginia’s largest county had, in four years, jacked up spending $1 billion beyond the growth in population and increase in the Consumer Price Index.   The report made several reasonable recommendations: the most important being that an outside panel of experts review government spending and become a permanent part of the budget process.   Then a fascinating thing took place: The government bureaucrats in Fairfax County reacted in textbook fashion to defend themselves and discredit the Jefferson Institute’s budget analysis. That response was disappointing not only in its arrogant tone, but because it clearly misstated the Institute’s analysis and used faulty figures in an effort to defend Fairfax County’s “overspending.”   Instead of looking for ways to improve government operations to save money, the County Executive – in the middle of an election year which is, of itself, interesting – put his staff to work attacking the Jefferson Institute’s report in an overly defensive six-page letter to the Board of Supervisors.   The rebuttal first attacked the methodology used in the Jefferson Institute’s analysis. It stated that using the CPI-population formula as a management benchmark for determining the need for an in-depth budget review was “simplistic” and “primitive.”   Their letter said a similarly simplistic analysis was made 15 years ago by the Blue Ribbon Commission on the Budget.   Simplistic and primitive? That earlier study, also known as the Cole Commission Report, was highly respected and praised when presented to the County.   And when this recent Fairfax County staff letter attacked the Jefferson Institute by associating it with the Cole Commission, the staff rebuttal failed to mention that many highly respected business and government leaders participated in that earlier effort. For instance, those who used the same CPI-population formula included the former Director of George Mason University’s Graduate Program in Economics and the former Director of the federal Office of Management and Budget. These certainly aren’t “primitive” or “simplistic” economists and such a characterization only shows how desperate this government staff seems to be to stop an outside review of spending.   Fairfax County’s staff contends that the budget is much too complex for an outside group of mere business leaders and economists to understand. It might be fairer to say the county staff does not want an outside review of how it spends the taxpayers' money!   Consider: Fairfax County staff criticized the Jefferson Institute’s four-year analysis by using budget figures over a seven-year period of time! The county’s staff used numbers starting in 2001, although the Institute’s analysis starts from 2004. In so doing, the rebuttal clearly distorted the facts. For instance, it says student population increased by 3,500, when in reality the increase over the four years analyzed by the Jefferson Institute was only 648 students. This is an error of 540 percent from a staff that says it needs no outside oversight!   One can’t help but remember Ronald Reagan’s famous comment, “There you go again!”   Fairfax County’s rebuttal of the Jefferson Institute’s budget analysis never disputed that in four years more than $1 billion had been spent over and beyond the CPI-population formula. All these bureaucrats could do were to ridicule the formula first used by the highly respected Cole Commission. Then they used incorrect numbers to continue their rebuttal. (These documents are on the Jefferson Institute’s website.)   Many questions come to mind when a government staff reacts in such a manner. Why is Fairfax County opposed to an outside group of experts reviewing its expenditures? Why was its staff compelled to challenge the Jefferson Institute’s budget analysis in such a non-professional way? How many hours were spent creating such a disappointing but revealing document?   The answers to these questions would be most interesting.   -- October 15, 2007