When Oregon's taxpayers are able to restrain themselves from fine-tuning fiscal policy, things run pretty well. There's good centralized oversight of debt and investment, strong financial controls, fully funded pensions and fine financial reporting. Agencies prepare six-year spending plans, and the state Office of Economic Analysis avoids politics in its approach to revenue estimating. Yet another initiative last November would have stripped the marrow out of the state's capital budget bones. Fortunately, it failed to pass.
Agencies here initiate, plan, evaluate and implement their own capital plan requests.
Four-year plans are updated and submitted to the Capital Projects Advisory Board every two years. The state does a reasonable job of monitoring and evaluating projects through to completion. The weakness here is prioritizing maintenance. Until recently, agencies conducted their own condition assessments. But they used different methods and standards and that led to information that was difficult to utilize statewide.