Editor’s note: Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.
[H]ere’s part of Phil Scott’s plan for holding down the state’s budget.
“Reduce the operational cost of every agency and department by one cent for every dollar currently spent.”
In his first year in office, Scott said, “saving one penny on the dollar generates about $55 million in savings.”
Or maybe not. Under adroit questioning by Bob Kinzel on Vermont Public Radio’s “Vermont Edition” program the other day, Scott acknowledged that some of that $55 million would be federal money, not savings from the state budget.
“It’s more a goal, a concept,” Scott explained. “There’s always savings somewhere … It’s doable because in your own daily lives, I’m sure you could save a penny a dollar.”
Or maybe not. Proposing to save a penny on every dollar is not a policy. It may be “a goal, a concept,” but it is not a plan. It’s not even a slogan. It’s a jingle, a bumper-sticker chant, maybe these days a tweet.
In political campaigns, jingles and tweets, like slogans, are not worthless; they indicate the direction the sloganeer/jingler/tweeter wants to take. The message in this one is clear: Phil Scott would like the state government to spend less money.
Not (Scott is a realist) less money than it is now spending, but less than it would spend if it does not undertake certain budget-cutting measures, such as saving a penny out of each dollar.
So the jingle’s message is informative. It lets voters know where the candidate’s head is at, what his goal is.
But it provides no information at all about how the candidate would achieve that goal. Neither, to be sure, does Sue Minter’s lone entry on her website about how she would make state government more cost-effective. She would “use modern management tools to find new and better ways to work, eliminate waste, and increase state government capacity.”
Wow! Do you suppose she also favors motherhood, truth, justice and the American way?
But budget-cutting does not lie at the heart of Minter’s economic policy. Here the party labels are helpful signposts. Democrat Minter wants to perk up the economy by raising the minimum wage, encouraging public-private investments and supporting growth of communications, clean energy, niche agriculture, and outdoor recreation. Republican Scott thinks holding down spending and taxes will inspire more private sector activity.
Which approach is likely to work better is open to debate. Neither is guaranteed to work at all. But because Scott has made budget-cutting the foundation of his candidacy, his “save a penny on the dollar” plan deserves scrutiny.
From which it emerges rather battered, and not only because it is so vague.
Like any enterprise, state government should be run as efficiently as possible, with waste cut to a minimum. But in no enterprise can efficiency be perfect or waste totally eliminated. A government is not like a guy or a household. A guy or a guy and his significant other can decide to save money — choose a cheaper cut of meat, skip the taxi and take the bus (better yet, walk), pack a sandwich instead of buying lunch, stay home and watch TV instead of going to the movies.
Governments can’t do that. Even in a small state like Vermont, government agencies operate as systems, and every system has inefficiencies built into it.
Yes, one system can be replaced by another which may have slightly fewer built-in inefficiencies. But slightly fewer does not mean none. And the adjustment from one system to another itself adds inefficiencies at least for a while, possibly erasing whatever gain the new system might provide.
But couldn’t the agency secretary or his/her assistant decide to buy a cheaper brand of staples or print cartridges, thereby saving a few bucks?
Yes, but very few. And that’s worse than inefficient; it’s downright wasteful. The secretary and his/her assistant earn too much and know too much to be wasting their time on staples and cartridges. They should be designing and improving policies.
Nor do these rules apply only to government agencies. Businesses (possibly excepting the tiniest firms) also operate according to systems with built-in inefficiencies.
Almost everybody knows this, because in this economy dominated by private, for-profit firms, most people work (or worked) for private, for-profit firms. Profitable firms, too, or they wouldn’t have been able to keep all those folks employed.
And yet, what is the chief topic of conversation among these employed folks as soon as they get to their after-work watering hole or gather at the water cooler (after making sure the boss is out of earshot)?
It’s the inefficiencies of the firm. It’s the bone-headed mid-level supervisor. It’s the inane accounting process or the latest pointless memo from Human Resources.
That’s the modern world: based on (and dependent on) systems, with their inevitable flaws.
This doesn’t mean that people, households, businesses and government agencies can’t save money. They can. Just as those above-mentioned guys and his significant other did: eat cheaper food, take cheaper transportation, don’t do as many things that cost money.
People can save money by buying less and doing less. So can state government. It can save money by being less generous to the poor and the disabled, by not repaving the roads as often, by not inspecting and enforcing clean water and wetlands protection rules as aggressively, by closing small schools.
Perhaps it should do some or all of that. Compared with most other states, Vermont has high welfare benefits and strong environmental regulations. Some think those benefits should be lower, the regulations weaker. They think there should be fewer teachers and fewer restrictions on what businesses can do. They should argue their case.
Because they have a case. The state could in fact cut spending, enough to hold down future tax increases, perhaps even enough to reduce taxes, if it provided fewer (or shoddier) services, if it weakened (or just didn’t enforce) some regulations.
There is no case to be made that any state could save that much money by accounting tricks, or by somehow making government more efficient. That’s a delusion.
This does not prove that Phil Scott is a deluder. He honestly wants to hold down spending, and he has chosen a metaphor – or maybe just a gimmick – to make his point. The gimmick is honest, but unconvincing.
Besides, Scott has another budget-cutting idea. He will not support, he said, nor would he sign “an annual state budget that grows more than the economy or inflation-adjusted wages did in the prior year.”
That deserves scrutiny also. To be continued.