TABLE 3—
Illustrative Quotes of Top Five Priority-Setting Criteria, From Interview Data: Budget- and Priority-Setting Criteria at State Health Agencies, United States, 2011
| Top Criteria Employed During Budget Cuts | Illustrative Quote |
| Political interests | “Are we funding a program simply because it’s always been funded and it’ll always get packed in by legislature? So why are we hitting our heads against the wall? Is it a program that’s politically popular, but does it really provide the results that we think that another program that’s not as popular would produce, or is it just the program that we’ve been told not to eliminate, because we’ve been told not to eliminate it? Or is it a program that gets defunded because it’s not popular by a certain group that’s in power?” Chief Financial Officer |
| Magnitude of the problem | “We will look at what happens if we don’t do something for a year or two, is that going to be a huge problem or can we stop something and pick it back up without losing a lot of traction and not having a lot of negative Public Health impacts from that. And we’re also going to look at—this is a little bit back in the population base—what percentage of the population is at risk from the program or activities that we’re talking about.” Senior Deputy |
| Mandated match or service | “We had to go through and look at the responsibilities that are outlined in statute, align those back to our program areas and then make recommendations in accordance with the statute for discontinuation of activities.” Legislative Liaison |
| Mission critical | “We've gotten to the point where we can't do everything for everybody. The message [the legislature] sent was … pick the programs, get back to your true mission and we're going to fund those and, hopefully, other groups will come out of the woodwork … as a need develops that is not necessarily mission critical.” Chief Financial Officer |
| Seriousness of the consequences | “If you cut this program are you going to die next week? If you cut this program are you going to die in a year? If you cut this program are you going to die in five or ten years? … I had made that priority based on the optimism that some things would come back over time, that the economy cycles and we would have better times.” Senior Deputy |