Efficient? Good. Effective? Even better.

Let's talk for a minute about the word “efficient.” As in streamlined, lean, providing the biggest bang for your buck - and who can argue with that?

By definition, efficiency hits that sweet spot between investment and results. It's a balancing act that gives the greatest return for the least waste.

We hear a lot about it in government - leaders promising to trim the fat, cut the dead wood, etc., etc., etc.

It's hard to make a case against efficiency, especially when it's your tax dollars on the line. But there's a point past which programs, like people, don't become more efficient with cuts - they become weak and ineffectual. Emaciated. They start to starve.

It's on my mind after The Gazette's editorial board met with state Department of Human Services Director Charles Palmer late last week.

Depending on the final budget numbers legislators land on in the next few weeks, Palmer's looking at laying off around 130 staff this spring and leaving open another 120 positions now vacant.

That's less than a year after a financial squeeze forced the department to close some DHS offices, cut hours at others and hand out early retirements to more than 600 staff members.

The idea back then was that half of those jobs would be filled by new hires at a lower salary. Now, that looks doubtful.

DHS already is down to 5,000 employees from 5,700 three years ago, without any corresponding reduction in responsibilities, according to DHS spokesman Roger Munns.

Those efficiencies have come at a cost.

When Palmer last headed DHS in the 1990s, the average income maintenance caseworker had between 200 and 250 cases - helping folks connect with services like food and housing assistance or Medicaid. That caseload now is 600 and rising.

Some of the work has been made easier because of actual workplace efficiencies - like online applications for service and telephone appointments. But, as Palmer told us Friday: “Efficiencies can only go so far.”

And when that sweet spot disappears in the rearview mirror, we're left with a system that's not efficient, it's emaciated: Caseworkers doing their work faster, clients waiting longer for services - all at much greater risk for error.

“You just can't manage that many cases without it having an effect,” Palmer said.

So while I'm all for efficiency, there's a third “e” word to keep in mind when cutting budgets for state agencies: Effective.

Adequate to the purpose; producing intended results - those are outcomes just as important as being efficient.

Comments: jennifer.

hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net; (319) 339-3154