
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 2, 1991                   TAG: 9102040261
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

STREAMLINING STATE GOVERNMENT

PROJECT Streamline was roundly dismissed as benign but useless busywork when Gov. Wilder announced it last May as his initiative to tag and reduce unnecessary state spending. Critics said the governor was going at a forest of deadwood with a nail clipper.

Still, the project has already identified more than $63 million in potential savings - much of which is already being realized through administrative actions. A second phase, due to be completed by fall, is expected to identify more savings.

Granted, $63 million out of a biennial state budget of $26 billion isn't an awesome amount. Granted, the savings-search has been conducted by administrative officials who may be subject to turf-protecting tendencies.

Granted, too, that some of Wilder's proposals to consolidate functions of government and eliminate nominal state agencies, such as the Council on Status of Women and the Council on Indians, are under fire in the General Assembly and may not survive.

Even so, $63 million is better than nothing. The administration deserves credit for pinpointing numerous spending programs, entrenched in the budget for years, that indeed seem expendable in the face of a $2 billion revenue shortfall.

The underwater archaeology program in the Department of Historic Resources, for example, doubtless has served some good purpose. For all we know supporters in scuba-diving masks and rubber fins are storming the Capitol now to protest its discontinuance. Taxpayers, however, won't miss it. They probably didn't know it existed.

Also useful no doubt has been the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services' effort to suppress the multiflora rose and Johnson grass. These are pestiferous weeds that can overtake a farmer's pasture before you can say "moo." But at a time when the state needs to protect funding for critical services in education, transportation, health and welfare, farmers may have to contend with the weeds on their own.

Then there's the traditional half-day off for state employees to attend the State Fair in Richmond. Go ahead, Governor: Zap it.

Not all of Wilder's proposed spending cuts are sensible. Some seem penny-wise and pound-foolish. Still, Project Streamline has identified many appropriations of dubious value that have been hidden in the state budget.

Lacking assurance that such items are being rooted out, taxpayers resent and resist taxation. So Project Streamline is a useful exercise.

It should not be mistaken, though, for the comprehensive budget analysis that still is required. It's one thing to find obscure, marginal expenses that are hard to justify and easy to ridicule.

It's quite another to secure big savings with creative ideas in managing government, and by cutting popular programs that are dug-in against economies.

by CNB