The Affordability Agenda is a Promise, Better Government Makes it a Reality

By Marisa Bremer, Zachary Markovits, and Aaron Mukerjee

Affordability defined this year’s elections, and we will inevitably see political pundits focusing their attention towards it now that November 3rd is behind us. With pocketbook pressures top of mind for voters, candidates across the political spectrum are responding by pledging to lower costs. However, voters are watching closely to see who can turn those campaign pledges into reality.

As incoming administrations prepare to tackle housing supply, healthcare, and utility bills, they face objective fiscal and policy realities: Practically every state and local government is currently navigating a budget crisis and hard trade-offs will need to be made. But government budgeting is always about choices, and while agencies need resources to execute policies, choosing to direct precious state dollars toward modernizing government service delivery is a strategic investment that both saves states money and immediately puts money back in constituents’ pockets.

Crucially, supporting tactical ways to make government services easier for residents is a direct response to affordability concerns: providing people dollars they are owed and slashing the everyday “time tax” of dealing with bureaucracy. When government systems lag, families carry the financial burden; when they deliver, they provide real, lasting economic relief. Executive leaders across the country are already demonstrating that a high-performing government is one of the most powerful affordability strategies available.

Making it easy: Simplifying systems to save time and money

When government interactions are fragmented and slow, everyone pays the price. Below are some of the ways that executive leaders found ways to reduce costs and accelerate opportunity for constituents, businesses, and government employees alike.

Enforcing Review Timelines and Clearing Backlogs

Better processes and enforcement can ensure residents get the decisions, permits, licenses, and services they need without government being a bottleneck.

• Tennessee’s Governor Lee signed legislation into law earlier this year establishing hard 30-day decision deadlines for residential permits, requiring municipalities to return half of application charges if a decision is delayed or rejected.
• New Jersey’s Governor Sherill issued an executive order this year on her first day in office to inventory permit processes, establish “shot clocks” for review, and quickly launch a permitting dashboard to address housing shortages, reduce backlogs, and clean up backlogged pipelines.
• Pennsylvania’s Governor Shapiro issued an executive order that led to the environmental agency clearing its entire permitting backlog under a money-back guarantee for constituents. Additionally the state’s processing for professional licenses like nursing dropped from 25 days to five — getting people to their first paycheck nearly three weeks sooner.

Consolidating Portals to Simplify where to Go

Many states already make everyday government interactions faster and more user-friendly by reducing the number of websites constituents need to visit to get what they need.

• Pennsylvania created a unified permitting front door on PA.gov cataloging over 2,400 permits and licenses.
• In Florida, a unified portal allows eligible residents to apply for Medicaid, SNAP, and cash assistance in one place rather than filing separate applications across departments.

Cutting Form Length to Save Residents Time

Americans collectively spend 12 billion hours a year filling out government paperwork. Streamlining these processes not only respects residents’ time, allowing them to build skills, look for work, and keep essential coverage like child care and food assistance for eligible recipients, but can also lift a huge burden for government workers.

• Michigan cut the length of its benefits application by more than half, raising completion rates and bringing the time to fill it out under 20 minutes, which raised client completion rates, slashed application errors by 60%, and cut in-person office visits in half. This freed up time for staff to focus on other day-to-day tasks.
• In 2024, New Jersey rebuilt its unemployment application, cutting completion times from nearly four hours to under 25 minutes, dramatically curing incomplete submissions that tie up claims examiners.

Using What the Government Already Knows

The largest improvements happen when residents receive the services they qualify for without needing to apply at all.

• The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1) directs states to use data sources to automatically determine a person either compliant with or exempted from Medicaid work requirements and maximize automatic renewals. On average, states are able to automatically verify continued eligibility and compliance for half of renewals.

Building Tools that Support Residents in their Daily Life

Innovative tools, such as mobile ID, are proactive ways states are meeting their residents where they are using convenience methods they already use (e.g. their mobile phone’s wallets).

• Ohio’s mobile ID works at TSA checkpoints and many state buildings and Governor DeWine celebrated it for saving time at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

Our Recommendation: Embrace the first 100 days

A new governor can start on much of this work right away by setting a clear agenda, hiring the right personnel, and finding the people needed to execute on this work. Here are steps they should consider taking when tackling their first 100 days in office:

1. Build or strengthen a digital services team. A starter team costs as little as $1 million a year, and can get started right away. That team can be scaled over time in response to administration priorities and associated technological needs. 18 states have demonstrated models that yield tens of millions in returns by building modern tools in-house instead of signing bloated, multi-million-dollar vendor contracts; consolidating duplicative IT infrastructure and software licenses across agencies; and dramatically reducing back-office casework and call-center volume.
2. Inventory permitting and licensing backlogs, and work with agencies to eliminate pain points. In less than a year, Governor Sherill’s (NJ) Day 1 executive order cut the state’s permit backlogs by more than 70% for some major permit types.
3. Improve hiring to fill already funded roles with top talent. Governors across the country, from Mike Dunleavy (AK) to Jared Polis (CO) to Glenn Youngkin (VA) have issued executive action to prioritize skills over degrees – making the most of allocated dollars for positions and providing more job opportunities to qualified candidates.
4. Automate Medicaid eligibility verification to strengthen program administration and integrity. Work with the outgoing administration and Medicaid agency to verify work status and exemptions with data the state already holds in order to comply with H.R. 1 work requirements and federal renewal rules.

State leaders will inevitably hear from agency heads and budget directors that tight state revenues, federal funding shifts, and understaffed departments make new initiatives impossible. But these changes are not additional line-item costs competing for scarce resources — they are the very solutions to the capacity crisis. By cutting bureaucratic bloat, automating routine verifications, and deploying modern technical tools, states can unlock hidden capacity in their existing workforce and generate returns that far outstrip modest upfront investments.

Governors do not need flush state coffers to make an impact. By setting a clear Day 1 mandate that government must work smarter and deliver better, executive leaders can simultaneously resolve their own fiscal constraints and put money back into the pockets of families and improve their daily lives.

The Institute for Responsive Government offers technical assistance to states taking these steps. To connect with subject-matter experts to discuss these policies further, please contact info@responsivegov.org.