A Tale of Two Budget Proposals — Part I

Delaware’s massive budget crisis has brought about a budget proposal that provides for deep operating cuts, which includes a very big cut in salaries for state workers. This has been discussed in varying places, but two budget proposals have been put out over the last few weeks that deserve some attention.

Proposal 1:

Senator Colin Bonini has responded to the budget crisis with a powerpoint presentation (which is in pdf format here).  This is a mess of a presentation — lots of emotional appeals to disaster and overkill followed up by a list of policy proposals.  And to call them proposals is generous.   There is very little in this presentation that is focused on closing any of the current gap.  Even worse, I have no idea how reliable the numbers they use are.  None of the data is adequately sourced, so I have no idea (and have asked a few others who ought to know) where they get some of their figures from.  If you start with the claim that DE spent more than 8 billion dollars in 2008 (I can’t even tell if this is a FY basis) and look at the rest of these numbers, you just can’t backcheck any of the data.  Which you have to, since phony or bad numbers is part of the usual talking point strategy — they expect the numbers to take hold in the media narrative, they never expect anyone to check either data (and we definitely tried, but in the end, there is no reason why I should have to do the work that should have been here in the first place) or the sources of that data.  So basically, without being able to source any of this data I assume that the data isn’t that useful.

So we move on to the “proposals”.  First, though, Sen Bonini gives us a bunch of items that the State is spending money on — a list that is meant to make you think that everything that the State is doing is just plain frivolous.  No accounting of the spending (often inadequate) to keep up with the demands on state infrastructure or any of the formula-driven spending for teachers or correction officers or other mandatory spending items.  Medicaid costs are noted going up, showing that the number of Medicare eligible is increasing; without noting that if the state’s economy was producing more jobs with health care attached, this number would be less.  And, of course, health care costs for everybody have been going up. There’s more, but you should see for yourself. And while you are at it, come back and tell us which of the examples Sen Bonini gives as frivolous spending he makes a proposal to cut.

Bonini then begins the usual pitch about having all of the government you want without paying more taxes.   To do that, he would propose these:

• Suspend Prevailing Wages — again with this.  I have no idea how much money this would save since I’m guessing that there is alot of construction that isn’t going to be done over the next couple of years and what gets done will have Fed participation meaning that Davis Bacon rules are in effect.  And, as we already know, I have serious questions about how much money this saves.  Besides, I want to know how these guys can be so concerned about salary cuts for state workers and be so cavalier about cuts to the salaries of construction workers.
• Consolidate School District Services — This is something that Jack Markell campaigned on and is still a good idea for those services it makes sense to do.
• Constitutional Limits on Spending — So we can be like California. Stuck between real cost inflation, mandatory and programmed spending increases, and limitations on increasing revenues. Do you know that their current unemployment rate is passing 10%? This limits what can be done in terms of even catching up with infrastructure needs, the costs down the pike of all of the retirees that are coming here and even in new business development.
• Early Retirement Option/ Hiring Freeze — Early retirements, like layoffs, cost money in the short term to provide whatever payouts that are needed to get folks out of the door. This, like most of the rest of this proposal does little to save money for the upcoming FY.
• Transparency and Honesty in State Government — Well, yes. Except that there are some costs in getting databases up and running, and if you were doing this right, you’d get alot more available via FOIA in a timely fashion. But that requires someone(s) to do it who have that as a priority. I don’t think that you’ll get much savings from this, though.

Overall, though, no real numbers (like a budget) that you can review and weigh. These policy proposals won’t do much to contribute to cost savings for the FY2010 budget that is currently in review. (Al Mascitti has more detailed observations here.) The lack of real numbers also doesn’t give you a way to assess the long-term structural impacts of these proposals, either.

But again, we see the lack of seriousness here — a set of ideological points presented as a budget proposal that promises to reduce the long-term costs of government. There is handwaving here about reducing the size of government without an accompanying discussion of what current government services will go away. Because some certainly will. Lots of early retirements and a commitment to not fill openings means that there is work that won’t get done, and someone should say what that is. If you are asking people to support you in demanding smaller government, then you must be able to say what of the current government you be eliminating or cutting back on.

Maybe there is a real budget someplace that Senator Bonini has. If so, he should put that up online and stop with the scare tactics. We already know that the budget is in dire shape.

ps. If you go to Sen Bonini’s website, you’ll see that he also has links to a calendar for presentations on this “proposal” which is currently empty. He also has a petition up you can sign. Note that the petition has no language petitioning anyone for anything, but does ask you for email data — it is more of a survey, really. People with issues on how their data gets used should use caution here — Sen Bonini provides no privacy disclosures that will tell you how this data gets used or disseminated.

Part II looks at rep. Kowalko’s proposals to try to back off of the 8% salary cut for state workers.