States and Schools and Sustainability

We're finding that the voice of the anonymous Getting to Green blogger at Inside Higher Ed, is a source of many SCUPer-like perspectives about integrated planning and campus sustainability. G. Rendell (a pseudonym) is in fact both a SCUP member and responsible for his (or her) institution's sustainability initiatives. Samples from the latest column:

The most typical state government response to fiscal crisis these days is a flat percentage spending cut across the board. The advantage of this is that it doesn't require explanation and it doesn't require thought. You're 15% short on cash, you cut expenditures at all agencies by 15%, everything's back in balance, right?

Of course, the balance achieved is only financial, and only on paper. If you cut expenditures on programs which are saving you money in other areas (like arbitration which reduces court costs or prenatal services which reduces health costs), the savings are more illusory than real. And if you cut social welfare expenditures, crime rates may go up, policing costs may go up, incarceration costs may go up, up, up. The politically simple tends to be the pragmatically stupid.

and

What resonated with me was the fact that "leaders" of so many state governments were spending so much time, so much effort, so much political capital and never once asking the question of how the existing structure and operation of their organizations was resulting in problematic expenditure levels. They never managed to get to the question of what existing expenditures were unnecessary, or of low priority. They never asked what sorts of efforts more than paid their own way on a net-net basis, or which ones were basically pouring money down a hole.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA