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| Here's a simple plan to save state millions |
| By twincities.com - Joe Soucheray |
| Published: 11/28/2011 |
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Minnesota -- The Department of Corrections kept a locksmith on board during the 20-day state shutdown in July, meaning that the locksmith got paid. OK, I'm cool with that. Presumably, the guy checks the locks on the cells and, well, if you are running a prison, there is nothing more comforting than knowing that all the tumblers click efficiently, and if that means a locksmith had to walk around and give each key slot a shot of WD-40, so be it. The Department of Corrections also kept on board, meaning that they got paid, three recreation specialists and two sports medicine specialists. The Department of Employment and Economic Development kept a Braillist on board, as in Braille. A fellow could go on and on culling from the report detailing the cost of the state shutdown just who got paid during the 20 days in July when we thought we had no government. Recreation specialist is a big state category of employment in a variety of departments, not just corrections, where we are apparently training linebackers. The rec specialists mostly stayed on. And the Minnesota Zoo pretty much stayed open using its own revenues, which meant that the zoo's life-support coordinator got paid. Huh? I suppose if a monkey started choking on somebody's tossed cigarette butt you wouldn't want the little guy to tip over in front of all those kids, so the life-support specialist is summoned from headquarters to run out there and perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Gee, it would be unlike me to come up with a disturbing observation, but I'm afraid I have. The 20-day government shutdown during the heat of July cost taxpayers $59 million, but the loss to the treasury was offset by $65 million in wages not paid to the 19,000 state employees who were laid off while some government offices were closed. This is all based on a report from the Minnesota Management and Budget Department. When the report was issued, I got the impression that people were squirming to come up with ways to make the shutdown sound devastating. The way I figure it, we came out $6 million in the black. Basically, if we lost $59 million in fees, lost lottery ticket sales, unpursued tax cheats and the like, but didn't, during the same period, pay out $65 million in salaries, there's a $6 million spread there that looks pretty favorable to you and me. Unfortunately, this monster has it both ways, and gets you coming and going. That $6 million to the good was eaten up by $6.2 million in costs to prepare to shut down, including $550,000 just to mail out literature to say that, look out, we're shutting down, and then another $3 million when it was over to have somebody plug the computers back in. Read More. |
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