The question might well be asked: Why does Arizona's budgeting system constitute outcome budgeting? The twofold answer is because of state intent and because of what might be called the natural evolution of outcome budgeting.
The Arizona Budget Reform Legislation expresses a clear preference for performance measures that emphasize the outcomes of programs.
In terms of intent, Arizona clearly desires to move toward outcome budgeting.
But not all elements of Arizona's program structure have developed valid and useful outcome performance measures.
For example, at least one performance measure identified in Table 13.1 (the number of children receiving services under goal 2) would probably not be considered an outcome by most persons.
Because many Arizona programs have yet to develop valid outcomes, alternative performance measures (such as input, process and output) are necessarily included by default, but with the intent that outcome measures will predominate.
Testifying to Arizona's desire to adopt outcome budgeting are two studies (Martin, 2000; Franklin, 1997), both of which document the state's movement away from the use of input, process, and output measures and movement toward the use of more outcome measures.