Keeping the Republic: Saving America by Trusting Americans by Mitch Daniels

Author:Mitch Daniels
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Conservatism & Liberalism, Political Ideologies, General, Political Science, Political Process
ISBN: 9781595230966
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2011-09-20T06:41:29+00:00

The Ride of the Efficiency Raiders

Fortunately, we have some evidence that not every effort to cut government spending is doomed to failure. In Indiana we benefited from the simple fact that all of us in the new administration were new to state office. No Republican had been governor of the state in the preceding sixteen years, so we started out asking a lot of basic questions that apparently no one had asked for a long time. For example, why did the state own twenty-one aircraft and have four different operations to maintain them? Why did we have seven separate departmental print shops? And why did we need thirteen thousand vehicles, more than one for every three state employees?

Our young efficiency raiders searched for answers to these questions, often by paying visits to relevant agencies. In one case, they found employees working for overtime wages in one print shop while other workers in the print shop next door were playing cards because they had nothing to do. In another case, our efficiency crew went through state garages putting pennies on the tires of vehicles. If the pennies were still there a month later, we said, “Give us the keys.” It was my treat, during my first year in office, to serve as the amateur auctioneer as we sold off the one thousandth unneeded state vehicle. By 2010 we had reduced the aircraft fleet by fourteen for a total of seven in our hangars, and the number of state vehicles by several thousand. I knew that even small reductions helped bend the state’s spending curve downward. Left unchecked, spending increases compound on top of one another year after year. Today’s small cut is the future’s large saving.

In business there’s a saying: “If you’re not keeping score, you’re just practicing.” On arrival in state government, we installed metrics in every department that were linked, wherever possible, to our paramount goal of private income growth. We ditched the antique step-and-grade pay system the state had long used and replaced it with performance pay on a bell curve. Gone were the days when the very best worker and the very worst in an agency were treated identically. The top few percent of state employees, after full and fair evaluations, received the largest raises in state history, in some cases double-digit increases back to back. The poorest performers were given a chance to improve or move on.

Management was given funds to award spot bonuses for exemplary work, and was encouraged to emphasize employee actions that saved tax dollars. Once a year, we honor with public service recognition awards, coupled with substantial cash payments, those state employees who do the most to save the state money.

Progress came gradually, but after several years the difference was palpable. In the biweekly updates I receive from every key department head, it is now routine to read of innovative money-saving approaches developed by state workers. The savings are often quite modest in the context of a $13 billion budget, but taken together they have been essential to our staying above water.

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