The year was 2010, the Obama administration.
The US Department of Education proposed a bold program called “School Improvement Grants” (SIG). Targeting the bottom 5% of schools, it was an innovative, daring proposal.
Though the administration was extremely progressive, the SIG program held plenty for everyone to love. More local autonomy. More money for good teachers and more flexibility to remove bad ones. Extra hours of classroom instruction time for students in most need.
The goals were equally attractive. Higher graduation rates. Better test scores. Teacher retention. College enrollment.
Who could argue with that? For many, it was a wish list for finally improving failing schools.
Fast forward to 2016, the end of the Obama era. The SIG program had run for six years.
The Department of Education did the unthinkable - it issued an honest report about the outcomes of the much-ballyhooed program.
The results were bleak. After six years and about $9 billion, the department itself admitted that there was no change in any of the named categories. No improvement in test scores, nor graduation rates. overall improvement at all in any category. It was as if it never happened.
The SIG program was a $9 billion failure. How could that be?
So, let’s fast forward to a week ago, in Wyoming. An outrage occurred in state politics, sparking a swift and angry uproar. Furious legislators railed, “this is crazy!“ “We are destroying Wyoming‘s future!“ “We are witnessing the biggest policy failure in state history!”
The Wyoming Supreme Court had just created out of thin air a new constitutional right no one knew existed – the right to kill unborn babies with far less restriction than the people of Wyoming have mandated.
Is that why some lawmakers were upset? That kind of wailing and gnashing of teeth could only come from something serious, like a rogue Supreme Court, right? But, no: those angry people were mostly silent on the issue of abortion.
Rather than the rights of the unborn, their ire targeted the thought of defunding the Wyoming Business Council (WBC), a costly and highly dubious government agency.
Over the past two decades, the WBC has spent roughly a billion dollars in the name of economic development. During that same period, economic growth – not unlike test scores since the US Department of Education’s formation – has actually worsened in Wyoming. Yet the mere suggestion of eliminating this bloated, debatable agency sent politicians and pundits into full-blown panic.
Most Wyomingites I know are pretty good at pattern recognition. Most of us have notedover the decades that government programs, for all good intentions and bold ambitions, seldom turn out as promised.
The WBC has a lot in common with the Department of Education SIG program. Great rhetoric, laudable ambitions, ample funding, no measurable results.
Like I’ve said, I’ve never seen a single government program that is worth taxing someone out of their home or off the ranch they have worked a lifetime to earn. For me, that goes double for WBC.
But several legislators vowed to protect WBC at all costs. Hours went to writing op eds and giving interviews, all denouncing the notion that a government agency might be bloated, costly, and wasteful.
I spent some time this week on the WBC website. I saw a lot of lofty, aspirational language about what they’d like to get done, but little in measurable results. It resembles the US Department of Education’s SIG program – long on ideals, short on accomplishments. One would think that if there was a list of great successes, it would appear somewhere on the WBC website.
Meanwhile, 20 or 25 miles away from my ranch, a new business has emerged. An ambitious entrepreneur has discovered a rich deposit of fracking sand, vital in an oil market accelerating the way it is.
He knows opportunity when he sees it. He has spent millions on construction materials and labor, hired Wyoming workers, and is set about building a thriving enterprise where none existed before.
Without even a phone call from the WBC, he found Wyoming was open for business.
But mining sand is a traditional Wyoming-type industry, the kind that has fed Wyoming families for more than a century. It’s not glamorous enough for the wannabe dealmakers at a government agency dedicated to hunting down AI companies.
Meanwhile, Wyoming is also open for business when it comes to data centers. Wyoming is perfectly postured for them, with every type of energy, and open to every other type. And energy is the mother’s milk of data centers.
We have what they want, and what they want is hard to find.
The point here is that when it comes to picking winners and losers, the government mainly excels at picking losers.
The winners tend to make it on their own.
The state of Wyoming is about as effective at generating new jobs and businesses as the U.S. Department of Education is at improving schools. I'll admit WBC doesn't cost as much as SIG, but when is enough, enough?
Speaker Neiman represents House District 1 and lives in Hulett
