Interim director chosen to lead Office of Performance Evaluations

Idaho’s independent watchdog office will soon have new leadership for the first time in two decades.

Office of Performance Evaluations Director Rakesh Mohan is retiring at the end of the month after 21 years.

The Legislative Council on Monday approved the appointment of principal evaluator Ryan Langrill as the interim director while a national search is performed to find a permanent director. Langrill officially steps into the position July 1.

Joint Legislative Oversight Committee (JLOC) co-Chairpersons Sen. Melissa Wintrow, D-Boise, and Rep. Douglas Pickett, R-Oakley, selected Langrill after interviewing existing staff, Wintrow said at the meeting Monday. JLOC oversees the office and selects the research projects for it to pursue.

Langrill has worked in the office — which evaluates the effectiveness and challenges of state programs, systems and policy implementation — for just over 10 years. He graduated with a Ph.D. in economics in 2013 and with a career focused on academia, he said.

His trajectory changed because while he was teaching at Emory University in Atlanta, Langrill said, when he started looking into other jobs so he could return to Boise, where he grew up and where his wife was living and working.

“I get to do research, and also it seems like the topic is different every year,” Langrill said of the OPE. “So the job just really appealed to me.”

He’s led recent projects related to retirement savings, tax preferences and Medicaid, according to the OPE website. The diverse range of topics and state functions has kept him interested, he said.

“The state government does so much, in so many areas in so many topics,” Langrill said. “It’s great to be able to learn about a whole new function of state government that I had never given much thought to, and then have nine months to crash course, become an expert, and not just an expert but someone who has to make suggestions to improve the operations of state government.”

His focus during his time as interim head of the office is to keep the continuity of the office and its operations intact.

“I want to try to minimize the uncertainty among the staff,” he said.

He has done that by keeping in regular communication with the JLOC co-chairpersons to update staff.

The office is working on three major projects that he will oversee once he takes the helm officially in July.

One study is an analysis of the bumpy implementation of the state’s financial and business system, Luma. The project is so demanding that all staff members are currently working on it, Mohan said at Monday’s meeting, and the two other pending reports are largely on hold until the Luma one is further along.

The office plans to provide its report to the Legislature in October.

There are also evaluations underway looking into Idaho residential care programs for children and youth, and K-12 funding and potential disparities among districts.

Langrill expressed gratitude for being selected as head of the office and said he was interested in helping keep intact and build upon what Mohan helped establish there.

“I’m honored that the co-chairs Sen. Wintrow and Rep. Pickett are giving me the opportunity to step in this interim so I can help set expectations within the office and preserve what is great about the work our office does and the culture that our office has,” Langrill said, “while also working with the co-chairs and legislative leadership to identify areas where we can become more responsive and implement changes that don’t undermine the core of what OPE is.”

Guido covers Idaho politics for the Lewiston Tribune, Moscow-Pullman Daily News and Idaho Press of Nampa. She may be contacted at lguido@idahopress.com and can be found on Twitter @EyeOnBoiseGuido.