Eliminate ‘slush funds’ now
Despite the hardships that a down economy place on each of us, state budget cuts help to create more efficient government by reducing the amount of excessive spending of taxpayer dollars. In this sense, the strainer is good.
Recent discoveries of alleged misuse in our state budget frustrate us. When we are told state jobs are cut, we expect that they are truly cut. So when we learn that state agencies receive funding for 1,167 “vacant” jobs, we become upset. The so-called “slush fund” where money allocated for payroll sits is misleading, inappropriate and unnecessary. State employees who have lost their jobs while agencies hold onto payroll for “other” expenses should be irate.
We side with House Republican Leader Kraig Paulsen on this one, and he deserves credit for bringing the issue to the forefront. Officials in both parties should set political motivations aside and take measures to stop this deceit that, as Paulsen says, “artificially inflates the budget.” The fact that state departments and agencies are allowed to hold positions vacant and use those funds for other expenses is sickening. Slush fund supporters say we don’t understand how government budgets work. They may be right, but we do understand how they should work.
When more than $56 million is held in vacant positions and used for other expenses, that’s a lot of slush. The governor’s office stated that of the 1,300 positions that are to be eliminated with the current cuts, 40 percent are already vacant. The pain of budget cuts suddenly doesn’t sound quite as excruciating.
We hear the pros and cons of running government like a business, but the parallel is difficult to dismiss in this case. Imagine any company having to cut payroll expenses and learning that department managers were knowingly accepting funds for “vacant” positions and using that money elsewhere. In most companies, those managers would be fired on the spot, and justifiably so. The fact that state government allows this to happen is incomprehensible, regardless of how long it has been done.
It is time to eliminate the slush fund system. A cut should be a cut, not an opportunity to hide money. Our money. CV
