Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 13, 1992 TAG: 9202130559
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
GAUGING EFFICIENCY IN GOVERNMENT
THERE ARE any number of ideas on how to make state government more efficient. Readers have offered some suggestions, appearing today on the page opposite. A few letter-writers suggest taxes could be lower if government were leaner: true enough, but too narrow a conception of efficiency.Cost savings aren't the only justifier. (Indeed, efficiency sometimes costs money up front.) By seeking ways to produce the same result with less work, a government can hope to benefit the public not just by saving money, but also by providing better and, in some cases, additional services.
The important thing is to measure efficiency by public benefit. Definitely, bureaucrats who accumulate clout by adding underlings need new kinds of incentives. On the other hand, the Virginia Economic Recovery Commission is right to propose increased appropriations for state departments of air pollution and solid waste to help them reduce a backlog of permit requests. The long backlog is inefficient.
It's important, too, to gauge efficiencies by their long-term impact. If a money-saving measure incurs larger costs in the future, it is efficient by too narrow a standard.
As Readers Forum writer Harry Groot suggests, efficiency may be gained by shifting funds to items offering higher returns. Why spend so much on prison construction, asks Jeanne Henley, when rehabilitation efforts (and, for that matter, public schools) remain underfunded? Which priorities, long-term, offer more bang for the public's buck?
Mary Jane Vaden cites fairness as reason to cut budget costs evenly, across the board, with provision for restoring funding when revenues return to former levels. But this implies that all existing priorities are fair, which they aren't. Neither are they efficient.
Granted, Claude Stewart has a point in observing that government too often accords priority to something simply by spending more on it. Everyone agrees schools are a priority. But "many do not believe we are getting our money's worth at present." True.
But if spending more doesn't guarantee improved results, neither does spending less. Contrary to Richard Radcliff's suggestion - that cutting state taxes by 10 percent is "the only way to get the fat out" - the issue remains: how and where money is spent.
Radcliff also recommends outlawing all lobbying by special-interest groups, an extreme as well as unconstitutional idea. But he's on to something. As Groot suggests - in offering public financing of political campaigns as an efficiency measure - the state could save money by deferring less often to narrow interests. Again: Measure efficiency by public impact.
A couple of references are made to privatization, something every level of government ought to be exploring these days - though, again, the private sector is not always or for everything more efficient than government.
The most questionable proposals are David Sutherland's and Jim Cash's. Sutherland says do away with state bureaucracy, without saying how transferring its functions (say, road building) would ensure efficiency. Cash wants to limit state-funded projects to state-manufactured products: a sure recipe for inefficiency.