We Can’t Afford to Nibble

Before the State of The State Address next week, I would like to offer my thanks to Governor Brad Little for placing Alex Adams as the new head of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. When I look up the definition of LEVITHEAN, it sends me to the Web page of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. Alex has made his primary task the restructuring of the Idaho Foster Care System. That single task will require every ounce of leadership that he has and the system needs to be fixed and reformed.

The LEVITHEAN has many heads and will require establishing priorities. Almost half of the Funds allocated, appropriated and transferred from the Feds that our Legislators will disperse this session will be to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. We need an Idaho Department of Government Efficiency made up of a panel of experts to define the problems at the Department of Health and Welfare and then recommend solutions.

In an earlier article, I have mentioned the work of House Speaker Mike Moyle has been doing in trying to root out the bureaucratic waste in Idaho government. His efforts have been met with skepticism in some quarters especially in light of the fact that as spending in State government has more than doubled over the past 10 years, the legislators are going to give themselves a 24% pay raise while they are just “nibbling around the edges” of tax relief.

We need big solutions to property tax relief by adopting a mark to sale model as opposed to a mark to market model of assessing values to base taxes on. We can easily cut food taxes in half. Those living on the margins and the elderly would all benefit from those two ideas.

Finally, to help Alex Adams we need independent signed partners audits of all providers that receive over $100 million of transfer payments as a precondition for receiving future transfer payments. The very fact that the cost of government has doubled over the past 10 years while the size of government has also increased tells us that audits of those receiving transfer payments from our State need to be scrutinized. We should not allow or trust government agencies to audit themselves.

I mean, does the IRS trust us to audit ourselves? Do shareholders of large companies trust large companies to audit themselves or do they hire independent auditors to “trust and verify” the books of the companies that they own? Aren’t we as taxpayers in the same position with government as shareholders are with the corporations that they own.

I say the Legislators shouldn’t be given a pay raise, until they directly address the issues of cost and size of government. “Nibbling around the edges” just costs us more money every year.