After posting this on Wednesday–the discovery that New Hampshire has the third highest number of welfare employees per 100,000 residents in the nation (More than California by the way which, if you noticed is a tiny bit bigger than New Hampshire)–it occurred to me that this may not be the only circumstance in which the Granite State has an excessive number of state employees involved in some activity related to the number of people who actually need or use a service.
And I’m not even broaching the subject of whether the activity is even necessary or a proper role for State Government, or even better left in local hands, or those of the private sector. We do need to address that, but given the welfare employee numbers we’ve clearly lost track of the responsibility inherent in the relationship between taxpayers and state spending.
So where else will we find examples of over-staffing–opportunities to trim back what amounts to government waste?
That would require us to have some understanding of how many people are actually employed by the state and in what capacities. So does anyone know exactly how many employees and contractors are working on the tax payers dime? And do we know where and what they are doing?
And if not, how do we find out?
