forgotston.com

This comment by a long-time, respected, state fiscal expert indicates that our state officials are looking at the state’s financial problems from the wrong angle:

Former legislative staffer Bob Keaton offered a litany of suggestions, including eliminating all taxes in order to start from scratch and levy the taxes needed to fund the state budget. (Emphasis mine) Baton Rouge Advocate, August 25, 2009.

Our governor and the leges should be looking at a tax structure that will enhance economic activity in our state; not one to produce revenues to fund a budget that provides all things to all people.

Once the tax structure is such that it promotes economic activity at a level where the private sector thrives then there will be less need for government.  The current pattern of thinking by state government has not changed since Huey Long was the governor.

Please explain

In his testimony yesterday, I’m very disappointed that former Governor Buddy Roemer didn’t point out the need to enhance the private sector as opposed to how to save a government that has outstripped the ability of the economy to fund it.  Such an approach is not new to him. He endorsed and pushed an effort in that direction while he was the governor.

If it was the right thing to do then, why isn’t it the right thing to do now? Perhaps Roemer should explain.

This is not a “chicken or egg” scenario. Under a free enterprise system, there can be no government without a thriving economy.

Change the focus!  You’re missing the important part of the picture.

C.B.

1 CB 8:27 am

The editorial in Sunday’s Baton Rouge newspaper ( see here) asks the two commissions charged with saving (fiscally) the state and higher education to come up with the dollar savings quickly.

The editorial asks the commissions to show us the money, i.e., from where will the cuts come.

I have more fundamental questions.

How much is the impending shortfall? Specifically, what makes it up? Until one defines the problem SPECIFICALLY how does one attempt to resolve it.  What’s the goal?

It’s not enough to just to say spend less or operate more efficiently.  That should be the on-going goal of state government.

We are being told that the state is in danger of “falling off a cliff” and approaching a “meltdown” as soon as 2012.  Those are near fatal terms.

Streamlining the current state service delivery vehicle connotes a can of polish, spinners and fender skirts.  LA is driving a Huey Long vintage, coal-burning, locomotive.  Polish and accessories aren’t going to stop the locomotive from “falling off a cliff” or “melting down.”

Suggesting a goal

When I testified this past week before State Treasurer John Kennedy’s subcommittee of the streamlining commission, I believed that our state was facing serious fiscal problems. I suggested that we return to the budget level pre-Katrina and Rita (August, 2005). That would reduce current state spending by $12 BILLION.

It was not a joke.

I reasoned that Louisiana had nearly doubled its budget in four years yet we still ranked last in everything that is good and first in everything that is bad. The latest published report showed we still ranked last among the other states in “quality of life.” We have to pay businesses to come to our state. Those two things says it all to me.

If we failed to show any improvement after adding $12 Billion (not including Federal disaster money) in state spending, perhaps we could simply continue to wallow at the bottom, but more cheaply. Clearly spending more money is not the answer to our problems.

What’s up?

It’s hard for me to imagine that life as we know it in Louisiana is about to come to end in less than 3 years when our Rhodes Scholar governor is traveling around the state giving away money, literally, with both hands.

It makes me wonder even more when I learned that the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee doesn’t have the time to spend serving on the “streamlining commission.” ( See story here.) Are you kidding me!!!

Neither the head of the Executive Branch nor the head of the Legislative Branch’s primary budget-writing committee cares to participate in saving the state from financial ruin.

Either we are being misled about the severity of the problem or the problem is so hopeless those with the primary responsibility of keeping our state solvent don’t want their fingerprints on it.

Some of us have been through the “sky-is-falling” routine one too many times.

SHOW US THE GOAL!

C.B.

1 CB 8:00 am

While we are still in a streamlining government mode, I have a solution to Louisiana’s problems that require consultants to solve.

Yesterday, it was reported ( story here) that our Rhodes Scholar governor plans to hire a high-priced, out-of-state, consulting company to teach his Commissioner of Administration, Angele Davis, how to develop a state budget. I’m informed that this is the same expert who helped then-Vice President Al Gore reinvent the Federal Government. That worked well.

A few weeks ago Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek asked permission to hire six high-priced specialists to tell him how to improve education in Louisiana.

A few months ago our ethically-challenged Economic Development head, Stephen Moret, hired a high-priced, out-of-state, consultant to tell him how to attract auto manufacturing plants to Louisiana.

When the department heads were originally hired, we were told that these folks were the best in their fields.  At least that was the justification for their very high salaries (not just in comparison to the other public employees in this state, but in comparison with their counterparts in the other states).

Solution

Why bother to spend all this money on these management positions. Simple hire someone who knows how to negotiate contracts with out-of-state consultants and eliminate the management positions. That way the state can on an ad hoc basis get the very best person to solve each individual problem.  It would save the taxpayers money by eliminating all the “dead wood” that is currently on the state payroll hired to handle the problem that they can’t resolve.

The bottom-line is to either hire better people in the first place to run state government or put the jobs out for bid to people who know how to run a state agency.  Regardless, stop hiring incompetent people and also hiring consultants to tell the incompetents how to do the jobs for which they were hired.  We cannot afford both.

C.B.

1 CB 8:53 am