Letter to the Elected
June 16th, 2009 by Bill ColleyThis is a letter from a local businessman to the folks in Dover:
Please vote against Senate Bill 132. This is the last thing the State
needs.
In addition, I request you make every effort to reduce state spending and
waste as you attempt to balance the State Budget.
I think you will have no other choice but to reduce the number of State
Employees. I am a small contractor and my work force is 25% of what it was
3 years ago. Why is the bloated State bureaucracy immune from layoffs?
Why should my taxes be raised to preserve this bloated bureaucracy? I am
barely surviving now. 33,000 employees not counting contractors and
consultants allows the State to spend at a rate second only to the liberal State
of California.
Why does the Education Department have over 200 employees as discussed in a
recent News Journal article. What in the world do they do every day to
pass the time? These personnel are in addition to the excessive number of
school districts top heavy with duplicated administration. What do they
all produce that is so valuable they we couldn’t do without it? Why are
there over 60 people paid (note I didn’t say earning) over $100,00.00 per year
in this department? Why does a department of 200 people need over 50
secretaries? In today’s world, most people do their own correspondence on
their PC. The secretaries don’t even answer phones anymore. Instead, we have
systems that let us press 1 for English. What are all those secretaries
doing?
Why does Del Dot spend a $1,000,000 per week on consultants. Does anybody
ever look at what we get for that money. This doesn’t even provide
drawings for shovel ready projects. The recent proposed re-alignment of Rt. #9
and Rt. #23 in Lewes is a great example. All of a sudden we see an
engineered drawing copied in the Newspaper. This was proposed by Del Dot working
once again in a vacuum. After the engineering drawings were prepared (at
what cost?) the public was allowed to provide all the reasons why this was
not a good idea. This was the same response as was generated by the
5-points Overpass proposed a couple of years ago and the various cross country
by-passes discussed to alleviate Rt. #1 traffic.
These proposals are prepared and presented with various alternatives
complete with cost analysis, construction estimates, etc. for all the options.
Does anyone understand this waste of engineering effort? Justification is
offered as the full cost analysis is required up front to determine the
viability of any route. I disagree as the viability can often be determined
“at a glance”. These full blown engineering efforts should be held until
public consensus is received. A pencil sketch or map with a magic marker
overlay would appear to be sufficient to promote discussion.
The Du Pont company once published an internal analysis of the Engineering
personality. The article basically said “the engineer doesn’t care if he
is ever right as long as no one can ever prove him wrong”. Is this why we
spend so much an end up with so little usable value received. Is it
because “this is the way we have always done it so it must be right”?
A recent newspaper article compared the costs of State purchases with
credit cards versus State checks. The implication was that the costs would be
magically reduced just by reducing the number of small checks. For
example, why pay multiple power bills when the Utility could consolidate multiple
bills on one statement. This is a great idea until you recognize that the
primary cost of the check is based on the labor costs to produce it. Would
reducing the number of checks actually save money? NO! Not unless there
was a resulting reduction in the workforce. Back to the same issue. The
workforce must be reduced. If the State workforce was busy enough, they
would probably find a more efficient way to work. That’s what happens in the
real business world.
The problem with the budget can be summed up by an example resulting from a
Freedom of Information Act type of bill proposed earlier (I think) this
year. An effort was made to attach a financial note to the bill to
indicate that the cost to the State would be the addition of another employee at
about $60,000.00 per year to handle the responses for requested information.
33,000 employees and not one was going to be able to answer these
requests? Unbelievable!
It would be humorous if it wasn’t so sad. Of course, the financial note
could have been a ploy to stall the bill. At worst case, if the bill was
passed, there would magically be a new job to fill.
I think the budget could be balanced without eliminating any State Police,
School Teachers or Prison Guards.
Keep the guys that plow the snow and the rest are fair game. Remember the
last time it snowed and the radios announced that only essential State
employees had to report to work. If they aren’t essential, I don’t want to
pay for them anymore.
Thank you for listening to my concerns.