Raising Taxes? How About Lowering the Cost of Government?
Across the country, governments at all levels are looking to replace lost tax revenues from lowered property taxes, sales taxes, and income taxes, reductions in fees charged to new businesses for licensing, and reduced collections of delinquent taxes.
In another post, I review a proposed Tax Overhaul for the State of Maine and include the commercial with the woman walking her lobster! Lowering the Cost of Government One idea that would work universally is to consider, rather than raising taxes, lowering the cost of government.
In every government agency, in every Federal, State or Municipal office building across the country, you can find redundant services, multiple people doing the same job, or employees filling jobs that are obsolete.
The Sad Story of "Marjory" and How She Wasted State Tax Dollars Here's an example from my days as a former "government insider".
In 2001, my team was instructed to audit the hundred of IT "reports" that were printed nightly, weekly, monthly, or on some other schedule.
When I say "printed", I mean printed.
These were the last days of mainframe processing and wide carriage "green bar" tractor feed paper.
So, we went about our audit, counting every page that was printed and developing cost savings models to present to our boss, the State Revenue Commissioner.
There was one report we couldn't account for.
It was a hundred page report that was printed nightly off site at a remote IT center and delivered by courier to our office building on Atlanta's Capitol Hill.
The report was designated to be delivered by courier to a state employee we'll call "Margory".
My job was to find "Margory" and poll her as to her use for the report, why it had to be printed, would she use the same report if delivered electronically on demand.
So, off I went.
I looked up "Margory" in the agency directory and found where her cubicle was located.
I went to her desk and found it empty, except for a stack of green bar tractor fed paper probably 30 inches tall (maybe 20 0r 30,000 sheets total).
I sought out the supervisor of the unit, and asked where "Margory" had gone.
I was told that "Margory" had retired about four months earlier and that nobody had replaced her.
I asked the supervisor to tell me who was using "Margory's" report.
She said nobody was using it, and that it was one that "Margory" used because she didn't like to look at it "on the screen".
After this meeting, I calculated that the Agency had paid roughly $15,000 to have this 100-page report printed nightly for four months, while no one was even using it.
It took 30 minutes of my time to ferret out this information.
The sad news is that there were many other redundancies and useless expenses showing almost as egregious behavior.
Bottom line is this: there exists stupid and unnecessary overcharges in every agency.
Just knocking a few of these out every month would reduce a government's revenue requirement.
One alone is not much, but consider the possibility of eliminating entire sections, divisions, or entire agencies whose usefulness has passed.
In another post, I review a proposed Tax Overhaul for the State of Maine and include the commercial with the woman walking her lobster! Lowering the Cost of Government One idea that would work universally is to consider, rather than raising taxes, lowering the cost of government.
In every government agency, in every Federal, State or Municipal office building across the country, you can find redundant services, multiple people doing the same job, or employees filling jobs that are obsolete.
The Sad Story of "Marjory" and How She Wasted State Tax Dollars Here's an example from my days as a former "government insider".
In 2001, my team was instructed to audit the hundred of IT "reports" that were printed nightly, weekly, monthly, or on some other schedule.
When I say "printed", I mean printed.
These were the last days of mainframe processing and wide carriage "green bar" tractor feed paper.
So, we went about our audit, counting every page that was printed and developing cost savings models to present to our boss, the State Revenue Commissioner.
There was one report we couldn't account for.
It was a hundred page report that was printed nightly off site at a remote IT center and delivered by courier to our office building on Atlanta's Capitol Hill.
The report was designated to be delivered by courier to a state employee we'll call "Margory".
My job was to find "Margory" and poll her as to her use for the report, why it had to be printed, would she use the same report if delivered electronically on demand.
So, off I went.
I looked up "Margory" in the agency directory and found where her cubicle was located.
I went to her desk and found it empty, except for a stack of green bar tractor fed paper probably 30 inches tall (maybe 20 0r 30,000 sheets total).
I sought out the supervisor of the unit, and asked where "Margory" had gone.
I was told that "Margory" had retired about four months earlier and that nobody had replaced her.
I asked the supervisor to tell me who was using "Margory's" report.
She said nobody was using it, and that it was one that "Margory" used because she didn't like to look at it "on the screen".
After this meeting, I calculated that the Agency had paid roughly $15,000 to have this 100-page report printed nightly for four months, while no one was even using it.
It took 30 minutes of my time to ferret out this information.
The sad news is that there were many other redundancies and useless expenses showing almost as egregious behavior.
Bottom line is this: there exists stupid and unnecessary overcharges in every agency.
Just knocking a few of these out every month would reduce a government's revenue requirement.
One alone is not much, but consider the possibility of eliminating entire sections, divisions, or entire agencies whose usefulness has passed.
Source...