Proposed Cuts for State House Budgeters

By Steve Poftak
April 3rd, 2008

Immediate Savings

· Adopt Gov. Patrick’s proposal to increase the share of health insurance premiums borne by state employees. This would bring public employee contributions more in line with the private sector.
· Consolidate transportation operations — A merger between MHD and MTA would save at least $20 million and including other agencies could capture additional efficiencies.
· Eliminate the Board of Library Commissioners - Municipalities run libraries, with few exceptions. These funds should either be incorporated into local aid, if warranted, or removed from the budget altogether. It is an unnecessary and duplicative layer of bureaucracy.
· Replace State House Park Rangers - 50 DCR Park Rangers guard the State House while 5 rangers oversee 400,000 acres of state parks and forests. Meanwhile, the Ashburton State Office Building across the street uses private security guards.
· Rollback Funding for the Commonwealth Museum — This almost unknown museum, located at the Massachusetts Archives facility (which receives multiple streams of budgetary and capital funds), has seen its budget quadruple in less than two years.
· Consolidate the State House Library. The library utilizes thousands of square feet of the State House but is lightly utilized.
· Studies and task forces. All studies should be performed by in-house resources without additional expenditures.
· Eliminate Item Pricing Requirements - Our archaic item pricing law puts Home Depot in violation every time it fails to tag each individual washer and bolt. Repeal this law and eliminate this line item at the Division of Standards.
· Reform State Police Overtime Practices - Overtime costs are inflated by restrictive work rules that prevent lower ranking officers from being assigned to these duties.

Conditional Savings

· Sell surplus state property. The state spends millions maintaining and securing abandoned public properties. A standard process is needed to allow the sale of these properties.
· Consider privatizing the management of the Lottery. The goal of privatization would not be to maximize an upfront payment, but to smooth out the funding stream of the lottery, minimize administrative costs, and provide a predictable yearly payment to cities and towns for a 30 - 40 year period.
· Eliminate additional assistance. Any rational additional assistance formula has long been abandoned. Necessary aid should be provided on the basis of a merit and any remainder should not be spent.
· Replace police details with flagmen. Massachusetts is currently the only state that requires that police – often at overtime rates – patrol roadway construction sites.
· Outsource the management of state office buildings: A number of state-office buildings, including the Mass Information Technology Center, are already administered by private management companies. BSB’s $6.86 million budget could be more efficiently spent with a private operator.
· Lease the Ponkapoag and Martin Golf Courses and the former MDC skating rinks: These facilities could be leased to private operators, resulting in income to the state, improved maintenance of the golf courses, and increased availability.
· Amend the “Pacheco Laws” to allow greater competition by the private sector to provide public services.

Long-Term Savings

· Empower the courts to manage themselves: The state-level judiciary in Massachusetts is beholden to the Legislature which micromanages their budgets and even sets most salaries by statute. Courts should be funded at the department level and required to manage their own allocation of resources.

· Rationalize the pension system: The current defined benefits system provides a generous set of benefits for a single set of employees (those with 20+ consecutive years of service) at the expense of taxpayers and those employees who might work at several jobs in their career. The system should be dramatically reformed to provide for the needs of our future workforce.

· Hold down debt levels: Current debt payments total almost $2 billion. By not radically expanding our debt levels (and eventually working through the bulge in debt from the Big Dig) we can save money in this area.

· Cap Quinn Bill Payouts -This $50 million program has resulted in massive cost inflation at the municipal level and increased pension and healthcare liabilities. The program should be amended to contain a flat bonus payment, rather than a lifetime percentage increase.

· Reform of prisoner management: The Commonwealth currently spends over a $1 billion on the Sheriffs and the Department of Correction, operating a two-tiered structure of facilities and management that is highly duplicative and unnecessarily decentralized.