HB 327
by Rep. Dee
Richard would eliminate 10 percent of all funding to contracts. Treasurer John
Kennedy, as he had in the House, argued to the Senate Finance Committee that
with so many of them out there that surely some weren’t really needed, and gave
examples of some that seemed superfluous. He said some of them had been subject
to line-item vetoes but then had been wangled out of the executive branch.
Commissioner
of Administration Paul Rainwater testified that the total dollar amount of
contracts from state government had been reduced by over a quarter since Gov. Bobby
Jindal took office. He said an arbitrary cut of 10 percent would cause
problems especially for larger contracts. He noted that contractual agreements
with the federal government also constrained cuts of this nature. And, he said
the Administration was sensitive to the issue of end runs. He pointed out that
queries were handled all of the time about them.
A
couple of senators then peppered Kennedy with defenses of some of the contract
titles and amounts he had read out. Kennedy said they weren’t bogus, put
perhaps should not be priorities. Sen. Edwin
Murray said he thought the better approach was to vet by contract by the
Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget, as Kennedy had suggested be done on
a case-by-case basis.
Sen.
Dan Claitor wanted to know if the
review procedures in the bill were anything new. The answer was not really,
that most of it was in law of civil service rules, and the rest was practice.
Sen.
Norby Chabert asked to amend the
bill to exclude the Department of State. Without objection, the amendment was
approved.
Kennedy
closed by reading letters that asserted contracting was more expensive often
than doing it by government. Richard said it would not apply to local
governments.
Sen.
Greg Tarver motioned to defer, and
without objection it was.
DID
YOU KNOW?
HB 328
by Richard would reduce state employees by 5,000 over three years. Kennedy said
this could be done by attrition, and said this was possible because managerial span
of control was too small. He said there had been just a one percent reduction
over six years in total (not full-time equivalent) positions, and that
compensation costs actually had gone up $650 million more, because of benefits,
overtime and other forms of additional forms of compensation, and adding new
employees. Again, too many managers and not enough employees he saw as the
culprit.
Rainwater
said in fact the full-time equivalent positions over the past three years had
been twice the total size of the total positions over the six year period. He
said the more “strategic” approach of the administration was working.
Chairman
Jack Donahue said previous legislation
had made as a goal the reduction of positions by 5 percent, and to his mind it
seemed departments were carrying it out.
Tarver
then moved to defer. With no objection, it was deferred.
DID
YOU KNOW?
HB
1092 by Rep. Jim
Fannin would make the reception of an income tax refund, rather than only by
debit card, could occur by other means. He said he wished an amendment could be
added, which creates a sunset provision for three years to compare methods.
This way, he could see whether the superior cost savings from the card was worth
it, compared to other methods. It was offered and added without objection.
With
that, the bill was moved as amended without objection.
QUOTE
OF THE DAY
We’re
talking about warm bodies – although I’m in the business of cold bodies ….
Tarver,
whose family is in the mortuary business.
No comments:
Post a Comment