In “Wasted,” I
lamented the fact that the Illinois public has so little basis on which to
judge the merit in that perennial complaint that our tax money is being wasted
by grasping public employees, bumbling bureaucrats, and corrupt pols.
I suspect that the very first letter to the very first
editor of the very first newspaper ever published complained about government
waste. The topic is unavoidable. I took it up in the context of local
government services in April
17, 2014. (See “Rearranging
the desks.”)
The original progressive reformers also
believed that “waste” – overstaffing with patronage hacks, loose procurement
practices, casual oversight of public projects – caused money to leak from the
machinery of local government like oil from an engine whose nuts are loose. The
good citizens of the Springfield Survey [in 1910] came up with a list of fixes;
their investigations had revealed where the leaks were but they had no wrench.
. . . [A] century later, the Citizens Efficiency Commission made many of the
same kinds of recommendations about public services in Not-Yet-Greater
Springfield.
These are still faults and
they still need to be repaired. I fear however that our governor has settled on
a fix before quite grasping what is causing them.
The State of Illinois already has in place provisions for
program oversight. Mainly they are meant to ensure that a dollar meant to be
spent on Program A is in fact spent on Program A. This is an essential measure
of a program but hardly the only one; it’s like judging a good husband simply
because he is sexually faithful.
Had Rauner been interested in really reforming state
government, he would have undertaken a systematic review, involving experienced
analysts and stakeholders, of every major program. He would have charged them
to ask not how much does it cost but is the need for it real? Is state
government the best provider? Can it be done better – not just cheaper –
privately with state support? Is the program as administered run in the most
cost-effective way — that is, not the cheapest way per person served but the
way that will achieve the desired ends at the least cost in money and
suffering?
There might be a reason why he hasn’t ventured
such a review. If you believe – and lots do — that the only meaningful criterion of government spending is what you
spend and not what you get for the money — a rigorous evaluation of the
governor’s officer to date would suggest that the money needed to run it was
ill spent.
This article appears in Jul 21-27, 2016.
