"Challenges for Change" gets a new name: Government Accountability Committee

MONTPELIER - A legislative committee created to oversee controversial government-restructuring legislation in 2010 will continue to meet this summer despite the death of “Challenges for Change.”
In the spring of 2010, the Democratically controlled Legislature and Republican administration of Gov. James Douglas launched a government-restructuring plan aimed at trimming $38 million from the budget without disrupting the programs and services administered by state government.
Dubbed “Challenges for Change,” the initiative fell well short of its goal and has since been criticized by members of both parties as a disingenuous scheme to shore up budget deficits without actually making difficult spending decisions.
As House Speaker Shap Smith said Monday, “’Challenges’ … has become a dirty word, so we won’t use ‘Challenges’ anymore.”
But Smith and officials in the new administration, including Gov. Peter Shumlin himself, say that while “Challenges for Change” may be dead, the concept it embodied will continue to figure heavily in the state’s budget-making process.
Smith underscored his support for the concept Monday at the first post-session meeting of the Government Accountability Committee, a 13-person committee comprised of 12 lawmakers and a representative of the Shumlin administration.
Rep. Donna Sweaney, a Windsor Democrat and chairwoman of the committee, said the group is “floundering with where we’re going” in the wake of ‘Challenges.’
Smith said he wants to see the panel focus its energy on devising new ways to measure the performance of various state-funded programs at the Agency of Human Services.
“I think we all share the goal of being able to better understand what we’re getting for the money we’re spending,” Smith said.