Karen has a strong record of fiscal responsibility as a business executive and as an elected official. In her first days on the job as head of the Fulton County Chamber of Commerce, she found that an employee had embezzled all but $10 from the Chamber's bank accounts. Many board members wanted to quietly dissolve the organization but Karen disagreed and brought the others to her viewpoint. She ensured that the embezzler was vigorously prosecuted and then led a revitalization of the Chamber with innovative benefits to recruit new members.
As Chairman of the Fulton County Commission, Karen was faced with a $100 million budget shortfall. The only proposal the other commissioners had was to raise property taxes to fill the void. That was unacceptable to Karen, so she re-wrote the budget to use smart, targeted cuts that eliminated the deficit without raising taxes one penny. That is the approach Karen will take when tackling the state budget as Governor.
As Secretary of State, Karen has saved taxpayers millions of dollars by cleaning up a good-old-boy organization and implementing policies that root out and prevent wasteful spending. Among these actions were:
* Streamlining operations in all agency divisions; implementing proven business principles; and making significant cuts to her agency's budget.
* Implementing zero-based budgeting, which required division directors to justify all expenditures from scratch each year and prevented them from merely seeking budget increases.
* Establishing the agency's first Office of Inspector General to oversee all the inspectors and investigators and cross train them across the Elections, Professional Licensing, and Securities divisions.
* Ordering an audit of state-registered businesses. The audit found that 20 percent of entities registered with the state no longer existed. Her office also collected $3 million in late renewal fees from corporations in arrears. This money was returned to the state's general fund.
* Cutting in half the number of agency employees who held state purchasing credit cards, cutting the spending limit from $5,000 to $500 and requiring purchase orders and reviews of each expenditure. As a result, expenditures of taxpayer dollars have decreased 50 percent.
* Installing GPS tracking devices on all Secretary of State's Office inspector and investigator vehicles and making sure they were on the job for Georgians and not running personal errands. This cut the average use of gasoline in these vehicles from 101 to 65 gallons in one month -- a 36 percent savings for Georgia taxpayers. She also prohibited investigators from taking their state cars home with them, incurring further savings. The GPS units also alert supervisors if a monitored vehicle exceeds 80 miles per hour, thus decreasing unsafe driving practices on our highways.