Where there’s a will there’s a way

What’s the lesson learned from the clean up after Tropical Storm Irene?

Deputy Transportation Secretary Sue Minter summed it up best in a New York Times story last week. The Shumlin administration received well-deserved front-page kudos for getting the state’s highways and bridges fixed and functioning in record time.

“The attitude,” said Minter, “was, ‘We’ll do the work and we’ll figure out how we’re paying for it, but we’re not waiting.’”

In other words, the administration was committed to rebuilding the state’s infrastructure after the flood regardless of where the money was coming from. That was the right attitude and it’s not a surprise that it got results.

It’s the opposite, however, of the usual manage-to-the-money approach where the state estimates its annual receipts at current tax rates and then decides what it can and can’t do.

We’re still waiting, for example, for the state to investigate the backlog of reports alleging abuse and neglect of elderly and disabled Vermonters. Organizations representing the victims felt compelled to sue this week to force the state to take action. We’re still tying to figure out how to pay for state policies that we know will reduce poverty—11.7 percent of Vermonters lived in poverty in 2010, up from 9.4 percent in the 2000 Census. And we’re still waiting to have adequate and affordable childcare for Vermont’s working families.

If we had managed to the money with post-Irene repairs, we would still be reading about impassable highways and stranded residents. The state would still be in crisis.

And in fact, the state is in crisis, but not in ways that make headlines. At least 70,000 of us live in poverty, and our middle class is losing ground. But our elected leaders aren’t showing the post-Irene, can-do attitude to tackling these problems.

After Irene, the state had a clear goal of rebuilding roads and bridges and our public officials kept at it until we achieved those results. We need to bring the same approach to the rest of state government and to state budgeting. Instead of allocating a certain sum each year to anti-poverty programs, the Legislature should adopt a budget that will reduce poverty. Instead of arguing that we can’t afford to hire more investigators, our political leaders should be saying we can’t afford to allow elderly or disabled Vermonters to be abused or neglected.

In other words, Montpelier needs to use the new thinking that guided the flood recovery – a commitment to results – to create a state that works for all Vermonters.