Wallowing in waste

OC Register

Wallowing in waste

When state legislators return to their jobs next month and start whining about how hard it is to balance the state budget, just point them to the "2004 California Piglet Book."

The new edition, released this week, identifies "$12.9 billion in wasteful, unnecessary and duplicative spending" in the state budget of $103 billion.

Maybe that's why the subtitle is, "The Book Sacramento Doesn't Want You to Read." The book was compiled by Citizens Against Government Waste, a group that advocates efficient government, and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Organization, an anti-tax group. It's modeled on CAGW's "2004 Pig Book," which found $22.9 billion in pork projects in the federal budget. This is the second annual book for California.

If all this waste were cut out of a state budget that still has an $8 billion yearly structural deficit, the state actually might run a surplus and could start paying down the $15 billion debt from the Proposition 57 state recovery bond passed by voters last March.

Here are some of the major pork projects that could be eliminated, which the report culled from various news sources. Except as noted, the quotations are from the report, which can be consulted for sources. It's online: www.cagw.org

"[S]ince the 1950s, California has experienced a tripling of population, while the California state government has increased fivefold during that same time period." Private sector workers earn 25 percent less, on average, than state government workers.

"The Energy Commission reported in July 2003 that the state vehicle fleet uses about 46 million gallons of gasoline and 9 million gallons of diesel fuel a year," but can't say how they got those figures. No one knows how much is used, let alone wasted - a worse scandal this year with even higher fuel prices.

"The state may now have to find $210 million more in the next two years to cover the expenses from state prison guards' pay raises."

"The California parole system is in fact a $1 billion failure. ... According to the New York Times, [a study] found that '67 percent of those sent to prison on California were parolees being returned for violating a condition of their release, almost double the national average of 35 percent.'"

Changing union rules to allow more privatization in public schools could save $300 million a year.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the "California State Library counts 29 separate programs that spend $5.6 billion to train almost 7 million Californians. ... But by the state's own count, less than 10 percent of those enrolled in six of the biggest programs ever complete that program and then go on to work part- or full-time in the year after training."

"We hope people will see [the "Piglet Book"] in conjunction with the California Performance Review as an emphasis on the spending side" of the state's budget problem, John Coupal, president of the Jarvis group, told us. The performance review recommended scores of proposals to reduce the budget gap by up to $32 billion over five years.

"Californians are opposed to tax increases," he added. "We're emphasizing that policymakers have ignored the spending side."

He said that, if the Legislature doesn't cut enough waste items, he expects Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger "would put some of the more egregious ones on the ballot" for repeal by voters. If he does that, saying this is the sort of thing he ran to fix, it would pass in a heartbeat."

It won't get to that if the Legislature does its job by cutting adequate waste from an excessively wasteful budget.