Walz said she's also seen resistance to performance measurement. Much of the problem of poor performance and poor reporting stems from a lack of staffing. They have no money to do those things. Where performance measurement is done, most fall back on job creation or retention as the main goal. The problem is that programs usually take credit for any and every job created or retained by a business that has a loan through their organization.
Job creation is easy in economic development.
The CFED report argued that job creation remains the best proxy for a loan fund's performance. Levere pointed out that many loan programs were designed in the 1980s when joblessness was a pressing issue. The yin and yang of loan making Greater sophistication is apparently coming to some loan programs, particularly at the state level. North Dakota, for instance, has begun to measure the wealth effect of loan programs, gauging not just new jobs and salaries, but their impact on a community's standard of living, Cramer said. Minnesota currently tracks wage rates and the amount of private financial leverage created by the public loan, and this year will also track a loan's impact on the local property tax base, according to an official with the state Department of Trade and Economic Development.