How about cutting back on state employees ( not education) I stay in lines all day going to public offices. If i going to wait let's save thoes salaries. It's not like they even act like they want to help anyone. I have to waste a day of work. I definitely don't want more of them doing nothing.
Kennedy's proposals save no money. None. The reason nobodY listens to him is because his ideas are out of touch with reality, don't consider how programs work, or what the source of funds is. One argument he makes is about Out of state consulting contracts. If we got rid of all of those we would save so much money. General enough to sound correct, but if you look at the details you see there is no savings there. One of the examples he often uses is the Workforce Commission spent $50,000 to hire a firm to teach its employees to use Facebook. He says the state should cancel that contract and save the 50k. The problem is the contract is funded by a federal grant and the purpose of the grant is to teach public employees to use social media. You cut the contract you lose the grant, and the state has not saved a dime. If you go through his proposal, all can be shot down with similar analysis. Kennedy is a giant blowhard with no clue how to save money. He is the guy who will pay treasury invoices late at the end of the year so he can say his agency operated under budget. There are some giant tools in state government, but Kennedy might be the biggest.
You could close about 7 universities that we don't need and save a couple hundred million. why is Suno still open? We can also cut workforce commission in half. That agency swelled post Katrina, and even though volume has been cut in half, head count has not. There are also a number of tax credit programs that could be done away with to fix the structural problem without raising taxes. But as a short term fix they don't offer much savings. JBE is digging the hole deeper by expanding Medicaid, but we had to do that apparently.
I agree. Once a public job is open it's like they can't end it. Once created it never goes away, whether the state has the funds or not. A regular business regularly has to evaluate its work force to be efficient and profitable. State and feds don't. All they want is more money. It's never ending.
Those are long term plans that will help. They won't help in June. And Medicaid costs us nothing in the short term. JBE will be judged on whether or not he can actually roll back his sales tax hike after solving the fiscal problems we have. But of course, he probably won't.
