[meenie]

Include the whole government. The reasoning is that if every dollar is not spent, the next budget will cut back on the particular departments.

[lucysmom]

"Include the whole government. The reasoning is that if every dollar is not spent, the next budget will cut back on the particular departments."

I worked for a community collage and the same thing happened. Trouble is that people/departments are not rewarded for thrift but punished when the next budget is designed. There needs to be more flexibility in the system - perhaps an account so that money can be held over into the next year (as it is the money is lost).

In addition, there needs to be more flexibility when evaluating the success or failure of a particular program. For example - a friend or mine developed a program in partnership with local industry to train what was then called "hard core unemployed" for entry level positions. His funding was endangered because the criteria for success was the number of participants who graduated from the program. Actually his program was so successful that his students were being hired before graduating.