Tue, 26 Jan 2010

Stepping in Political Sausage

Some years ago, I fell briefly into a rabbit hole of small town politics. A would be competitor to the rural ISP I worked for was lobbying for govmint grant money that had been allocated by the state for small town business development. This being small town, we had worked closely with this would be competitor in the past and were fairly knowledgeable about their business operations.

This grant money was being requested to pay for some of their ongoing operating costs (thus allowing them to more effectively compete with us). By our reading of the law for that grant program, the specifics of their proposed usage clearly didn't fit the mandated criteria for awarding the money. We were concerned that the technical specifics of their proposal induced the technically uninitiated to glaze over, and not notice the poor fit.

So we went to city hall to learn the status of the proposal. We talked to the part time city employee whose job included reviewing grant proposals and making recommendations to the city council. She had already reviewed the proposal and recommended that the council move forward on it. After a bit more discussion we saw, as expected, that technical details had only been skimmed and the winning point was the claim that it would create jobs. We conveyed to her our understanding of what was being proposed and how that didn't fit into the intent of the grant program. She said she agreed with us, but the matter was now out of her hands. The train had left the station, and our next opportunity to stop it would be at the city council meeting.

So at the council meeting, we again presented our understanding and our concerns about the grant proposal. The high points of our argument were:

• the wording of the law stated the grant money could be used to build new infrastructure. But the proposal was effectively to pay ongoing costs for already operational infrastructure. Wording in the law disallowed this use.
• the grant would be awarded and administered by the city, but the business is in fact located outside city limits, so the city has no jurisdiction.

The council listened politely but was unmoved. Awarding the grant seemed like a no brainer to them. They had gotten around the city limit restriction before, and the new vs existing argument seemed unimportant. What carried the day was the claim that this use of the grant money would create jobs, and if grant money wasn't awarded, it would be lost.

I don't remember exactly how we arrived at the next procedural milestone, but the net effect is that after the outcome at the city council, we ended up needing to make our case before the county commissioners. And this time, our would be competitors were arguing for their proposal at the same meeting.

After listening to the proposal and our concerns, the commissioners gave the proposal a green light. One of the good ol boy commissioners patiently informed us in so many words that this decision was a no brainer. This grant money was exactly the kind of bacon they'd been elected to bring home to constituents. Furthermore, the money was a "use it or lose it" proposition - this money would return to the state pool if not awarded by counties during the current budget cycle. And that claim of job creation always resonates in these difficult times [with elections looming]. Concerns about technical details of the proposal were not significant enough to warrant impeding progress.

"No hard feelings", our jubilant but gracious competitor assured us after the meeting. "You really ought to consider applying for your own grant money..."

Losing is not fun. But there we were.

Or were we? The concerns still seemed well founded. Laws are still laws. On the way home, we decided we'd play one more card. We had a contact at the county prosecutor office. The next day, I forwarded a succinctly worded question about the relevant law, and received a quick, very helpful reply. The response affirmed that awarding of grants must follow the letter of the law, and the state auditor has ultimate oversight responsibility. So I called the suggested contact at the auditor office and conveyed the story one more time. This time, it took. Apparently, the county government had already been in their sites for shooting from the hip.

The grant was denied.

I don't know if there's any moral here. Yes, the process is ugly. But we already knew that. If I hadn't gotten involved, I expect the grant would have gotten awarded. But I did get involved, and the outcome is that this particular tax money wasn't misspent on this particular proposal. Shall we conclude that the system worked? I suppose we could, for sufficiently broad definitions of the terms "system" and "worked".

posted at: 21:55 | path: | permanent link to this entry

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