The Schweitzer administration says it's providing "unprecedented detailed information" to state lawmakers, to measure the performance of dozens of government programs.

One problem, however: It's not quite the information the Legislature expected or asked for.

"What they gave us are not 'performance measurements,"' says Clayton Schenck, head of the Legislative Fiscal Division. "Really, it falls way short. They have pulled back on the information they agreed to provide."

Still, a state senator who's been a driving force to get the information says he's encouraged that Gov. Brian Schweitzer agreed to respond to the legislative request for "performance standards" for his administration.

"I'm glad the governor is doing it; good for him," says Sen. John Cobb, R-Augusta. "We'll just have to help make him understand how to do it better."

The debate is over something Cobb and other legislators have been pushing for some time: A detailed set of goals and objectives from the executive branch, to show how it's spending money as approved by the Legislature.

"It's accountability," says Cobb. "We spend all this money -- don't we want to ask how it's being spent? What's going right? What's going wrong? It's common-sense accountability."

For the past several months, Schweitzer administration and other executive branch officials, such as the state superintendent of schools, have talked with legislative staff about what the standards would be and what the administration would report.

The Legislative Finance Committee chose 167 initiatives to examine, and both sides appeared to settle on goals and objectives to be sought, Schenck says.

But when the Schweitzer administration submitted its report last week, it had stricken out many of the detailed goals and substituted general goals.

For example, instead of improving the timeliness of child-welfare investigations by 10 percent by 2009, the administration struck out "10 percent" and said the objective will just be to "improve" by the end of 2009.

Instead of the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks maintaining the number of fishing days in Montana at 2.5 million and fishing licenses at 400,000 or greater, the Schweitzer administration changed the goals to simply "maintain number of angler days spent fishing in Montana and fishing licenses sold."

David Ewer, the governor's budget director, says the administration believes it's appropriate to state "general intentions," and if the Legislature wants specific data, its staff can request it later.

But the administration doesn't want to tie itself to specific, numeric goals over which it may not have any control, he said.

For example, the number of patients at the State Hospital or the number of convicts in community-correction programs are determined primarily by the courts or other factors, Ewer said.

"If we say we have a specific number in mind we can do everything possible, but if the number is not met, people can say, 'You failed,'" he said.

Ewer said the goals the administration has submitted are "an unusual step," and that it represents the broad themes the Schweitzer administration intends to fulfill.