Rakesh Mohan retires after 21 Years leading Idaho's OPE

BOISE — Well before he took a position in the Idaho state government, Rakesh Mohan felt like a failure.

Mohan had traveled to the U.S. from India in the 1980s to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry, he said, and when he didn’t complete the program, he felt like he couldn’t return because of that failure.

“In Indian society at the time, and still today, there’s a lot of pressure, not by the parents only but teachers, parents, other family members, neighbors, everybody — there’s an unbearable pressure,” Mohan said. “And I felt that unbearable pressure, and I would have brought shame because Father was a university professor. Going back would have been bringing shame to his reputation, his family name. And that was just not possible. ... So I did not have any choice other than just struggle here and survive.”

Decades later, Mohan is retiring after 21 years as director of the independent Office of Performance Evaluations (OPE) — and after dozens of in-depth reports about state policy, program effectiveness and recommendations, accolades, and recognition from lawmakers and outside organizations of the office’s work.

Mohan’s last day is Sunday. Ryan Langrill, a principal evaluator who’s worked in the OPE for 10 years, will take his place on an interim basis beginning Monday.

“Rakesh has done so much for our state, and has been such a committed public servant, truly,” Sen. Melissa Wintrow, D-Boise, said. “The leadership he’s provided in that office and the reports they’ve provided have just been top-notch.”

Wintrow is co-chairperson of the bipartisan Joint Legislative Oversight Committee, which oversees OPE.

When Mohan took the position in 2002, the office was mostly just auditing programs to determine compliance with the law. But evaluators at the time didn’t bring in stakeholders or question if the law was serving its intended purpose. Mohan changed this approach.

“Compliance is important, but I wanted to go at a higher level,” he said.

A key part of his transition in the office was building relationships with the Legislature, the executive branch, the media and the public. At the time, this was considered risky because it could impact the view of the impartiality of the office, Mohan said, but he felt like it was critical to build trust for the office so the information provided made more of an impact.

Wintrow said for her, the holistic evaluation approach is more valuable to her as a lawmaker.

She pointed to several reports on deficiencies in the state’s child welfare system, which led to a number of laws including the creation of the Child Protection Legislative Oversight Committee and this year’s bill that created an outside ombudsman office.

“Those were eye-opening,” she said.

BACKGROUND

Mohan’s path to working in state government performance evaluation was unexpected. He had aspirations of public service, he said, but thought it would be in a totally different field.

He’d wanted to travel to either the U.S. or England — where his father studied — to pursue a doctorate in chemistry since he was a child. But when that didn’t work out and he decided not to return to India, Mohan worked as a chemist in Kansas for eight years.

He was realizing chemistry wasn’t his “cup of tea,” so he looked into getting a master’s degree in public administration. Growing up, Mohan said he had focused on science classes since the eighth grade and never had taken any kind of social studies or political science course.

But after a couple of classes, he was invested. After completing the program, he took a position with the Kansas Legislature working as a performance auditor. He later left to be a senior performance auditor for the Louisiana Legislature.

Both positions focused on checking for compliance with state law.

His professional outlook changed when he took a position doing performance evaluations with the Washington state Legislature.

For the first time, he worked for an office that took a more holistic approach, and not only evaluated if programs and agencies were complying with the law but if the law needed to change to get the desired outcome.

“The way they did their work was very meaningful and rewarding,” Mohan said.

When he was selected as director of Idaho’s OPE, he took a lot of the things he learned in Washington and brought them to the Gem State.

He began bringing in members of the public and industries who are affected by the policies being studied and using their input to create the scope of research, ensuring the study is responsive to their needs. He also communicated more and built relationships with lawmakers, staff and other elected officials.

There were employees at the time who pushed back against these new tactics, and some left, he said. But all the feedback he received from the Legislature and stakeholders was positive. He also said the American Evaluation Association embraced the approach, so he felt confident he was on the right path.

Former Republican House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, who established the office with then-Senate Minority Leader Bruce Sweeney, said “the hard part” of executing the vision of a nonpartisan office was finding the right director.

“Rakesh ended up surfacing to the top,” Newcomb said. “He was a stalwart as far as maintaining independence, and so the information that was gathered had credibility rather than political bias.”

Newcomb said Mohan has spent 21 years fulfilling this role.

The former speaker said of Mohan, “I never had any regrets, I always felt like he was the right guy.”

One of the first evaluations that stands out to Mohan was a 2009 report on the Idaho Transportation Department that found deficiencies in the revenue structure and funding issues, and identified an estimated $19.6 million in one-time savings by using the office’s recommendations.

“It put us on the map,” Mohan said about the study.

The 175-page report led then-Gov. Butch Otter to direct the department to implement all 44 of its recommendations and create a transportation task force.

The evaluation received the Impact Award in 2010 from the National Legislative Program Evaluation Society.

Mohan said a 2013 study that found widespread teacher dissatisfaction and a series of reports on the state’s child protection system also stood out to him as particularly impactful. He also pointed to a report issued last year on the severe shortage of home health care workers and the impact it’s having on both providers and the people they serve.

He said the job has been meaningful for him because of reports that seek to improve conditions for Idaho’s vulnerable citizens. The office has unique access and the platform to share the in-depth information needed to truly understand the scope of problems, he said.

JLOC co-Chairperson Doug Pickett, R-Oakley, said he appreciated the evaluation released last fall that looked into the Idaho Health Data Exchange going into bankruptcy.

“I thought that was revealing and helped us understand better the forms of transparency of government spending,” Pickett said.

Pickett has served two years in the Idaho Legislature and said working with Mohan in that time was “a pleasure.”

“Rakesh has been very professional and objective, and he has created a culture in the office of professionalism and he has a staff that works very well together,” Pickett said.

Even after 21 years leading the office, and his professional and personal praise from colleagues, Mohan said he still struggles with the feeling of failing for not having lived up to his parents’ expectation that he also get a doctorate in chemistry.

“My family, my friends, my mentors — I have lots of relationships with different people in the profession, they remind me constantly to let that thing go,” Mohan said with a laugh. “But it has been very difficult. But I’m much better at it now than it used to be.”

OFFICE’S FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE

In creating the office, Newcomb said, it was important to lawmakers that it operate as independently and outside of politics as possible. He said the model for Idaho’s OPE was based on what was done in Kansas at the time, which included oversight of the office by a committee that had an equal number of Republicans and Democrats.

Mohan said his goal is to minimize the politicization of the research, because data gathering can be done in a way to skew results in favor of a certain position if not done carefully.

However, there have been a number of efforts over the years to politicize the office and its evaluations, or that might have created the perception that it could be influenced by politics.

In 2007, there were members of JLOC who thought the scope of evaluations should be decided by the committee, Mohan said. He noted that even though the committee is bipartisan, it is still composed of politicians.

“The outcome of the study can be influenced by how you design it,” he said. With Mohan’s opposition, the committee narrowly voted in his favor and left the process in place.

Mohan said there have been numerous times where lawmakers criticized the results of his office’s evaluations and questioned his staff’s methodology, including in 2013 when the House Education Committee chairperson “chewed” him out over the teacher dissatisfaction study. Mohan said he has always stood by his staff and has been confident in the quality of their work.

In 2014, there were discussions in the committee that the members should review reports and make suggestions before the results were released publicly. Mohan opposed this because he said it may create the perception that the results were unduly influenced by politics.

The most significant challenge came in 2023, when legislation was introduced and passed in the House that would have eliminated JLOC and put oversight of the office under the Legislative Council, which is made up of legislative leaders. It also would have directed the office to review all state agency contracts, which opponents said would hamstring the eight-person office and strip its ability to do in-depth analyses because it wouldn’t have adequate time or resources.

The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Megan Blanksma, R-Hammett, argued it would “streamline the process” and said it wouldn’t change the office.

Mohan was vocally opposed to the legislation, arguing it would fundamentally alter the office and remove its independence. Newcomb at the time told the Idaho Press he was also opposed to the change.

“If you don’t insulate them politically, then the perception is it’s going to be a witch hunt,” Newcomb said at the time. “The data you gather will always be politically tainted and challenged, and rightfully so.”

Going forward, Mohan has stressed to the members of the Legislative Council — who will conduct the search and select his replacement — that he hopes the next director will maintain the office’s independence.

Wintrow and Pickett both said they hope the issue has settled.

“I’m just so relieved and pleased that we were able to fend off some of these irrational attacks on the structure of the committee,” Wintrow said. “It is essential to keep this committee and evaluation process nonpartisan.”

She said the committee has worked well together and doesn’t see a reason to change it.

Newcomb expressed some pessimism for the future independence of the office, citing the current hyper-polarized political climate.

“I think that it’s really, really difficult nowadays to avoid political bias,” he said.

He pointed to the recent election and that some of the “warriors” on behalf of the office were ousted, including Senate President Pro Tem Chuck Winder.

“I think there’s a huge battle coming,” Newcomb said, “and it’s going to go on for two years.”

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.