Quite often I find myself debating one of my government-defending liberal friends (we both agree that a proper European style label for him would be a "social democrat") about the elimination of waste and unnecessary spending when dealing with public funds. During almost every discussion, I end up telling him that if we just simply sought out– and eliminated — waste at every level of government, we could lower taxes all around, have a kick-a$$ economy, and still have enough dollars left to take care of the truly needy. Of course my friend scoffs at that notion, and tells me that I have no idea what it’s like to govern. This is usually accompanied by an accusation that I am only taking it on faith that all government is wasteful and that, other than "anecdotal" evidence of what he considers small and insignificant occurances, I have no proof.
I wonder how he’ll explain this one… From yesterday’s Union Leader:
Audit finds poor oversight of NH state vehicles
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire does a poor job keeping track of the nearly 2,000 passenger vehicles used by state employees, according to a recent audit.
There is no formal statewide monitoring of the vehicles, nor is there any statewide agency in charge of requisitioning, maintaining or disposing of cars. Some departments have written policies and fleet managers; some do not. Instead, each department makes decisions for itself, leading to a dearth of quality data and poor use of resources, the audit found. While some employees are reimbursed hefty sums for using their own cars, many cars go underused.
"Decentralization has resulted in 33 systems recording fleet data; lack of standardized policies and procedures; lack of statewide passenger fleet-related cost data; inconsistent data reporting; inaccurate and incomplete data; barriers to sharing state resources and disparate levels of fleet resources and expertise across state agencies," concluded the audit by the Legislative Budget Assistant.
Which of course, leads to this:
The audit found 156 vehciles assigned to non-law enforcement individuals on a 24-hour-a-day basis. Most of those permanently asigned vehicles failed to receive proper approval from the governor and Executive Council.
Hello? Is anybody home? Gov. Do-Nuthin’? Helloooooo!!!??? And you thought he trimmed all the fat from the budget, didn’t you?
The next question is this:
WHAT ABOUT THE GAS CARDS?
I happen to be in close proximity to a state-run gasoline depot. One sees the "G"-plated vehicles there at all hours of the day and night, and on weekends too. My, what dedicated public servants! And what about all the non-"G" plated cars and minivans we see filling up 24/7? What necessary state business that you know of, besides snowplows and police, operate outside of what used to be called "bankers’ hours"? Or are they truly giving of themselves and merely gassing up to save the taxpayers some time in the upcoming workweek? Certainly this was all they are doing, as they wouldn’t be using taxpayer-bought gas or taxpayer-funded vehicles to conduct personal business, right?
And how will the Democrats, led by Gov. Do-Nuthin’, blame this on the Republicans? Oh I know– it’s Bush’s fault… and John E. Sunoco’s fault. Yeah, that’s it!
"Oh Doug. There you go again. You have no idea what it’s like to govern!"
NOT!