MEP Finalist for Innovations in American Government Award

Cutbacks in service loom after 63 percent budget reduction

The Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) is one of 15 finalists for the 17th Annual Innovations in American Government Award. Administered by the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in partnership with the Council for Excellence in Government, the award recognizes creativity and excellence in public sector service delivery.

MEP is the only economic development program included among this year's finalists, selected from more than 1,000 applications. MEP, a state-federal partnership, supports a network of more than 1,400 professionals in more than 300 locations around the country providing technical assistance, support services, engineering services, and business advice to small manufacturers.

Five of the award's finalists will be selected to receive one of five $100,000 prizes in July. The cash is something MEP sorely needs right now. After seeing its budget cut 63 percent this year, MEP program administrators are still figuring out how to maintain the program's core capabilities and effectiveness before center contracts expire at the end of June.

Things could have been worse, however, as the Administration had proposed the program's elimination in its fiscal year 2004 budget request. Congress restored less than $40 million of the $106 million FY 2003 appropriation level. The Administration's request for next year is $39 million.

The irony in MEP's selection for the Innovations Award this year, given the budget situation and three years of massive layoffs during the global restructuring of most manufacturing sectors, was not lost on Mike Wojcicki, president of the Modernization Forum, a trade association for MEP centers around the country.

"The Administration wants to eliminate the program just when the nation's small manufacturers need it the most," Wojcicki said in a press release.

Criteria for selection as a finalist for the Innovations Award included a measure of the applicants' effectiveness. MEP has an extensive performance assessment and evaluation system in place and was prepared to tell its story for the selection process. For example, manufacturers who completed MEP projects in 2002 - the most recent year for which data is available - reported sales of $2.8 billion, savings of $681 million, plant investments of $940 million, and 35,000 jobs as a result of MEP projects in just the following year.

The ability of the national program to achieve similar results in the near future already appears compromised given the changes looming once NIST lays out its plans to deal with the 63 percent reduction. A recent Modernization Forum survey shows MEP centers are downsizing rapidly in anticipation of NIST's decisions. MEP centers in at least 16 states said they expect they will entirely close in the next year. MEP centers already have laid off 15 percent of their staff and without additional funding in FY 2005, the surviving centers will reduce their staffs by more than 50 percent.

See http://www.excelgov.org for more information on the Innovations Awards. The MEP survey results can be found on the Modernization Forum's website at: http://www.modforum.org/surveyresults.pdf