This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 12, 2011 - As several Missouri legislators -- and even Gov. Jay Nixon-- have made clear, "rebooting government" isn't just about saving money.
It's also about challenging the status quo.
So Tuesday's first two sessions of the state Senate's "Rebooting Government" panels focused, in part, on such politically volatile questions as:
- Why does Missouri have 114 counties (plus the city of St. Louis), when California, the nation's largest state, has only 58? (Only four states have more counties than Missouri.)
- Decades after most states have consolidated school districts, why do almost half (234) of Missouri's 522 districts have 500 or fewer students?
- Why does Missouri have one of the nation's largest House of Representatives?
State Sen. Jim Lembke, R-Lemay, and a former House member, may have strained relationships with his old colleagues after he acknowledged Tuesday that he has filed a bill to trim the state House to 103 from 163 members. He estimates that such a reduction would save the state at least $6 million a year.
Lembke (who notes that the 34-member state Senate is among the nation's smallest) says that hard economic times should prompt hard looks at everything connected to government, from top to bottom.
Gov. Jay Nixon is expected to unveil his administration's proposed budget next week; it is expected to call for $500 million in cuts for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
Although the state's income picture is improving, the 2012 budget will be tighter because of an end to the federal aid that has helped Missouri officials balance the last three state budgets.
But even Lembke, a fiscal conservative, acknowledges that there may be limits in how much can be cut in some areas of government.
He also chairs the Senate's reboot panel charged with examining "general government and the office of administration" (the state's chief fiscal body).
"This is the inner workings of state government," Lembke said.
Of the $400 million annual cost for such functions, he said he'll be happy if he and his panel agree on $40 million in proposed cuts. Cutting much more, said Lembke, would probably be "a little egregious" and harm the state more than help.
All of the Senate's reboot committees are spending this week, among other things, sifting through hundreds of cost-cutting suggestions sent in by average Missourians.
Those reviewed by Lembke's five-senator panel, for example, include such proposals as:
- A sliding scale of pay cuts for state workers (10 percent for those earning more than $80,000, graduating down to 1 percent for those making under $40,000).
- Barring the use of state cars on weekends.
- Restricting cell phone use.
- Privatizing more state functions.
A version of the sliding scale of pay cuts might end up on the committee's final list, but the ban on the use of state cars on weekends probably won't -- as the state Highway Patrol is among the agencies that must use state vehicles on weekends.
But even that idea did prompt a serious grilling of Office of Administration chief Kelvin Simmons, as to whether the agency is monitoring the use of state-owned cars as closely as it should.
New state Sen. Brian Nieves, R-Washington, also got a bit upset when he learned that the office of Attorney General Chris Koster, a Democrat, has set up a special web site in Spanish. Nieves contended that the site may violate Missouri's constitutional mandate (put in place in 2008) that all state proceedings be in English.
Koster had announced creation of the site in August 2009, and said at the time that it did not run afoul of the state's language requirement. But Nieves asserted Tuesday that the web site reflected an improper use of state money and promised to probe the matter further.
The number of Missouri counties came up when state Sen. Tim Green, D-north St. Louis County, said state and local governments could save money if smaller counties consolidated some functions -- such as having district attorneys instead of a county prosecutor for each county.
Later, Green observed that his suggestion might not go anywhere, but he did hope it might at least spur some discussion, on a local level as well as in Jefferson City.
Ditto for school-district consolidations, which became a hot topic earlier Tuesday during the reboot session on education. So did the equally volatile issue of teacher pensions.
In response to the Senate's panel queries, state deputy education commissioner Ronald Lankford acknowledged that even the smaller districts generally had their own superintendents and a layer of mid-level administrators. Consolidation could substantially trim such local costs.
State Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, said she attended an education seminar in which experts said that the best economy of scale was achieved with districts of about 7,000 students. (Those smaller or larger had larger per-student costs, Cunningham was told.)
Lankford said that only 26 Missouri school districts have 7,000 students or more.
Since public education is largely a local issue, should state government care about the size of the district? State Sen. Victor Callahan, D-Independence, said the state aid funding formula is written in such a way that many smaller school districts get far more student aid than they would receive if the state money was simply doled out on a per-student basis.
"The formula itself is a disincentive not to consolidate," Callahan said.
As for teacher pensions -- a touchy political topic even during good economic times -- state Sen. Jason Crowell, R-Cape Girardeau, told the education reboot committee that local districts and teachers are putting in too little money for the retirement benefts the teachers receive. Contributions are several percentage-points lower than they need to be cover the costs, he said. Crowell's contention is state government needs to be involved to guard against pension shortfalls.
Cunningham, meanwhile, called for re-examining tenure and encouraging performance-based salaries. She also suggested that schools be encouraged on all levels, but particularly universities and colleges, to consider expanding the use of the internet for some classes that might otherwise be cancelled because of little interest on a particular campus.
As with its counterparts, the education panel is reviewing pertinent cost-cutting suggestions from the public. But some panel members were concerned that the public also may need to be educated -- by the press as well as politicians -- on what state government can do and what it cannot.
State Sen. John Lamping, R-Ladue, noted some of the suggestions dealt with issues, such as school consolidation, that ultimately the state has little or no control.
But he emphasized that education, in particular, is of primary importance to the government as well as the public. Poor education, said Lamping, affects everyone -- and can cost the state and the public more in the long run.
On Wednesday and Thursday, reboot panels will focus on the social services, pensions and the courts. And since Lembke's panel didn't finish its work Tuesday, it's holding another session on Thursday.
And for all the cost-cutting talk, many of the senators were wary about predicting which trims would actually be made.
Last year, a similar reboot effort came up with close to $800 million in proposed savings. Few of those ideas actually made it into this year's budget.
