And the lawmakers returnedeth to Montpelier, where layeth down the lion with the lamb. Nor did the Democrats unsheathe their rhetoric against the Republican governor, who in turn utterethed not the words, “irresponsible spending.” But stoodeth they side by side, as brethren that dwelt together in unity.

All right, all right! Enough of that! Let’s heed the advice of veteran Democratic Rep. Michael Obuchowski: “Don’t be too cynical.” What began in Montpelier yesterday was both sincere and bipartisan. Democrats and Republicans from both houses, legislative leaders and Gov. Jim Douglas’s top aides (not to mention Douglas himself), who….

Oh, you mean the same guys who just several months ago stopped barely short of questioning each other’s parental legitimacy? The same guys who still hold diametrically opposing views on how the state should be governed? We’re supposed to believe this era of good feeling will last?

…are really trying something new, an innovative approach . This time, state officials are not acting on their own. The Legislature is spending $200,000 for the services of Public Strategies Group, a Minnesota-based consulting firm which is….

Waitaminit, Waitaminit! We’re supposed to take seriously a firm that could write the sentence, “To achieve this client centric approach, the State will seek to redesign the delivery system through the more effective and efficient alignment of financial and staff resources across public sector programming, such as economic benefits, social services, health and human service programs”? It’ll cost us more to translate that into English than we’ll save by following their recommendations.

…providing advice on how to “do more with less,” as several legislators said, for instance…

More with less? Don’t be ridiculous. When the inputs are smaller, so are the outputs. Any time a politician brags about a “win-win” solution, somebody loses.

…having a “unified and systematized…human service intake” system, so that Vermonters who needed social services could enter the system through “one doorway,” rather than having to visit several different agency offices. Similarly, according to the Public Strategies Group report, “streamlining” the process of granting permits to developers could “increase compliance with state regulations while spending 3% less in (Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012).”

Not those old saws again. This “one-stop shopping” plan for both social services and development permitting has been around forever. Furthermore, almost nobody is against it. Douglas and the Legislature could have put all that into effect years ago without the advice of some clowns from Minneapolis.

The consultants came up with some other ideas. For instance, they suggested the state could save money if it would “empower families to support aging Vermonters and individuals with disabilities. Vermont is spending almost $69 million from its General Fund for these services, and “aging demographics and reduced public resources may be requiring Vermont to reconsider its expectations about whom it can afford to serve.”

In English, that means don’t do as much for some doddering old geezers and disabled folks of all ages. That’s doing less with less. They admit it.

If there is a central guiding principle behind the Public Strategies Group’s recommendations it is that the state should not pay for services as much as it should pay for the results of those services. In effect, the PSG’s report says, Vermont and other states use something comparable to the health care system’s widely criticized “fee for service” method, “paying providers ‘hit by hit’ rather than…paying for outcomes.”

Instead of paying for the work being done, the consultants said, the state should pay for the results obtained/

As an example, PSG’s Babak Armajani told members of the Joint Legislative Government Accountability Committee, instead of paying for “a night of bed-space” for a caretaker to tend a sick child all night, the state could “actually purchase the (desired) outcome,” of a healthy child.

Excuse me! In this case the desired outcome is what the state is paying for. The service itself – a sick child not alone in the night but watched over by a health care professional – is the desired outcome. That’s often true with sick children or physically and/or mentally disabled people of any age. They have to be taken care of. The taking care of them is the outcome. It’s expensive.

(Armajani later acknowledged that he might have chosen the wrong example. Instead, he said, think of a social service agency hired by the state to deal with troubled children. Instead of paying it according to how many nights a child stays in its facility, pay it for quickly placing an abandoned child in a good home).

The Joint Committee adopted the 42-page report from the consultants and the committee’s own five-person “steering team” of three legislators and two Douglas Administration officials. The report envisions possibly saving $38 million in Fiscal Year 2011, which begins July 1, without major cuts in state services.

Yeah. That’s a lousy 38 million bucks of a projected $150 million budget shortfall. Let’s see. If this pocket calculator is correct, that still leaves $112 million of money to be raised or programs to be reduced or eliminated.

Meaning that the big-wigs are still facing the choice of raising somebody’s taxes or cutting services to people who really need them. Not that it would actually come down to ‘crippled children left out in the cold.’ But it might be close.

And how about considering the possibility that this report and this display of harmony is a way of: (a)diverting attention from the real choices (and possibly the real disputes) confronting them; and (b) laying the groundwork for making the case that they tried as hard as they could to avoid having to consider raising taxes or slashing services. The possibility, in other words, that all this was less bipartisan harmony than bipartisan political theater.

Afterwards, Douglas and House Speaker Shap Smith and Senate President (and candidate for governor) Peter Shumlin, the Democratic leaders who orchestrated last year’s first-ever legislative over-ride of a governor’s budget bill veto, stood together and pledged to work together to solve the state’s budget problem without last year’s rancor.

When Shumlin said, “Do not doubt our resolve. We will get this done,” he said it forcefully enough to raise doubts in even the harshest cynic.

Okay, Okay. Maybe they mean it. And this consultant stuff doesn’t hurt. It’s like having a good editor go over your copy. There’s nothing wrong with hiring someone to take a fresh look at the old ways you’ve been going about your business. If not taken to extremes, efficiency can be useful.

It’s just that whenever you hear politicians talk this way, you should remember the immortal words of Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne.

Who?

The guys who wrote the music and lyrics to, “It seems I’ve heard that song before”