The state of Wisconsin has received a B- grade in a report by a group that evaluates government performance nationwide.
The B- puts Wisconsin at the national average, a grade shared by 18 states, according to the Pew Charity Trusts? Government Performance Project report.States are graded on four main categories: people, information, money and infrastructure, according to Neal Johnson, director of Pew’s GPP.
?The Pew Charity Trust is an organization dedicated to improving knowledge and making it available to a wide variety of audiences ? to provide state managers with tools they need to assess how they are doing and to improve things.? Johnson said.
Wisconsin received a B- in both the people and infrastructure categories and a C+ in both the information and money categories.
The people category looks at the human resources at a state government level.Information looks at how information technology is used to make decisions, and money examines how tax dollars are used. Infrastructure is where all three previous categories come together to maintain the government, Johnson said.
The report showed Wisconsin has weaknesses in managing for performance, structural balance and capital planning.
?In the leading states doing A- work there is an overarching vision for the state,? Johnson said. ?In Wisconsin, there are strategic plans at the various departments, but there is no overall strategic plan for the state.?
University of Wisconsin governmental affairs professor Susan Paddock agreed with Johnson?s view of agencies having different goals.
?The problem that they are talking about is that each agency has its own systems,? Paddock said. ?Many of the larger agencies sit quite independently.?
According to the report, Wisconsin is strong in labor force, debt management, budgetary transparency and strong internal controls.
In general, Wisconsin is good at hiring and retaining employees but has a high turnover for people employed for more than 10 years, according to Johnson.
?In many cases, those are some of the most valuable employees,? Johnson added. ?That?s a fairly serious issue when you start losing those folks.?
Linda Barth, spokesperson for the Department of Administration, said having an outside eye looking at the state can be a good thing, but some of the focus was on the wrong things.
?I think they overplayed the employee issue,? said Barth. ?Our turnover rate is about 5.1 percent, which is pretty good.That includes retirements.?
According to the report, Wisconsin?s handling of infrastructure has been getting better, despite the state?s estimated $652 million deficit.
?Gov. Doyle was able to create a rainy day fund and put $56 million in it, but we are feeling the slowdown from the national economy,? Barth said. ?He?s taken a lot of steps to try to get us in good financial footing.?
The last report card from the GPP was in 2005, where Wisconsin also received a B-. While the state improved in some areas, there were some downward trends in others.
?It kind of balanced; Wisconsin is by and large a reasonably well-managed state,? Johnson said.?I would say that in general, there?s pretty much a balance between where there were slight upticks and slight downticks.?
