A bi-partisan commission, co-chaired by state Senator Gayle Slossberg, D-Milford, today formally approved 30 proposals members believe could save more than $450 million in fiscal years 2011 and 2012 if enacted by Democrat Dannel Malloy’s incoming administration.
The Commission on Enhancing Agency Outcomes got off to a rocky start in 2009, but has slowly but steadily been continuing its work examining how to run the state more efficiently.
Slossberg in a statement said the commission today approved “a solid package of reforms, options that don’t require cutting vital services or raising taxes … There are many opportunities in this report to tackle our budget problems head-on.”
She highlighted the following:
- Engage in more aggressive efforts to transition senior care out of nursing homes and into assisted home care
- Find savings through cooperative purchasing and reverse online auctioning
- Encourage greater generic prescription drug use, and change management of the state’s prescription drug program for low-income individuals to a third-party system
- Enhance community prevention and intervention efforts in the Department of Children and Families
- Restore the State Contracting Standards Board and other entities charged with reviewing contracts and identifying waste
- Reduce energy costs by 10 percent
- Expand tax auditing and enforcement to pursue delinquent accounts
- Consolidate back-office human resources functions in the state’s various human services agencies
- Reduce postage usage and convert business entity filing to electronic methods
Readers of this blog will recall I recently wrote about retiring Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s skepticism regarding Malloy’s promises to overhaul government once he takes office on January 5.
And the Commission on Enhancing Agency Outcomes’ website provides a handy run down of all the various “good government” studies gathering dust on capitol shelves.
I asked Malloy spokesperson Colleen Flanagan for a comment and she e-mailed me the following statement: “Governor-Elect Malloy and his Office of Policy and Management Secretary Designee Ben Barnes are reviewing a number of recommendations, ideas and suggestions to achieve substantial savings, and will propose those in his formal budget presentation next year.”
CUT SPENDING AND ENTITLEMENTS.MAKE PEOPLE ON STATE AID WORK IN STATE PARKS 2 DAYS A WEEK TO GET THEIR CHECK.COULD BE PHYSICAL OR CLERICAL. IT WILL HELP NOT HURT THE BOTTOM LINE.
Those all sound like fine ideas but none of them are going to help much ballancing the budget.
What I would like to see is instead of making paperwork electronic, let them study to see how much of this garbage is really necessary. We don’t need electronic red tape any more than we need the old kind.
Making more and better use of email and eliminating a lot of the requirements for hard copy mailed, and in some cases, certified, should save a lot of money. Some agencies will point out the certified mail requirement is statuatory and changing will require legislative changes.
This is a change that is long overdue.