Watchdog agency was saved by GOP uproar

Rep. John Patrick, D-Rumford, claimed in a recent op-ed (April 13) that the Republicans were playing politics in the recent budget debate by putting the spotlight on the Democrats’ proposal to slash the budget of the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability (OPEGA), the independent government watchdog agency, and put it under the thumb of a partisan controlled agency.

I could not disagree more. Saving OPEGA was all about good policy. You be the judge.

Our constituents have been telling us that our taxes are too high – that we need to trim the cost of government to match the taxpayers’ ability to pay. Republicans have heard this message loud and clear. We are spending beyond our means. We cannot continue to rely on new taxes to avoid the hard decisions about how to allocate limited public resources among the much larger public needs and wants.

This year we were faced with the need to cut $200 million from our budget due to reduced revenues. Hard decisions had to be made. It makes sense to first look for savings in efficiencies and cuts in less effective programs before make more difficult cuts. OPEGA exists for the very reason of helping the Legislature make these decisions to allocate scarce resources intelligently. The Democrat plan to cut OPEGA off at the knees went to the very heart of the policy surrounding our budget debate.

After serious resistance from the Democrats, OPEGA was established several years ago as a truly independent agency, free of the partisan control of either party, charged with studying our state agencies, to identify inefficiencies, and to measure effectiveness of programs. This is just the information we need when hard decisions have to be made.

In spite of the vital function of OPEGA, the Democrats proposed to cut its research staff in half and destroy its independence from politics by merging it with an agency under the partisan control of political appointees. Why? To protect pet programs? To avoid putting the spotlight on inefficiencies?

Yes, as Rep. Patrick complains, Republicans did speak long and loud against Democrat attempts to use our budget problems as a smoke screen to marginalize OPEGA. We did so because of our desperate need for its help to find potential savings through efficiencies and unbiased data on the effectiveness of programs.

After the uproar, the Democrats did restore the funding and independence of OPEGA and now take the credit for saving it, but I ask the public to be the judge. Was OPEGA worth saving? Would the independence and effectiveness of OPEGA have survived if Republicans had not raised the uproar Rep. Patrick complains about? I don’t think so.

What do you think?

Sen. David Hastings III, R-Fryeburg, represents Senate District 13: Baldwin, Bridgton, Brownfield, Denmark, Fryeburg, Harrison, Hiram, Naples, Norway, Otisfield, Oxford, Paris and Porter.