MERIDIAN — Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal columnist Bobby Harrison made an interesting point last week.
“Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves sent the clear message recently that legislative leaders are looking for ways to cut budgets — much more so than providing additional funds for programs that are working,” Harrison wrote.
In other words, legislative leaders — mostly Republicans — are seeking to starve government, not feed it.
That’s not a bad approach as far as it goes. Government is always gorging at the feeding trough.
But this approach does not go far enough. First, it may starve but continues to feed out-of-date, unnecessary and poorly performing programs. Second, as Harrison suggests, it also starves programs that are performing. With such an approach, there is no incentive to perform better.
Some of us used to think it would be transformative if Republicans ever gained control of the Legislature. Small-government-minded leadership surely would eliminate unneeded programs, consolidate duplicative programs, and modernize out-of-date programs.
It’s just not happening, folks.
Instead we have all those same old programs, plus some new ones favored by Republicans. We have duplicative boards of education with the new charter school board plus the old state education board. Despite studies calling for consolidating back-shop operations for schools and agencies, all still have their stand-alone shops. Best practices from other states showing show to operate more efficiently, streamline operations and eliminate cost just seem to pass us by.
So, our tax dollars continue to be stretched to pay for the same old bloated, inefficient government plus added retirement costs, added health care insurance costs, growing Medicare costs, and so on.
• Bill Crawford is a former state legislator from Meridian. Contact him at crawfolk@gmail.com.
