Years ago, I worked as a General Contractor for the federal governments' General Services Administration (GSA). Everyday I witnessed wasteful spending! A GSA employee once told me, "If we don't spend all the money budgeted for this year, we won't be able to ask for more money next year." I would attend meetings where employees slept through the entire meeting--right in front of their bosses! When I later asked the Supervisors why this was allowed, their reply was, "We can't fire them we would have to promote them to get them out of our departments". This is completely ridiculous and would never be tolerated in the public sector.
Lady Liberty
I support the governor's Civil Service Reform measures. Among other things, this would allow supervisors to more easily fire incompetent employees. I also support creating bonus programs so state employees could be rewarded for cost saving ideas that cut waste and inefficiencies. We should be vigilant in saving tax payer's money.
This phenomenon is not limited to the federal government. Even at the state level, we need to be better stewards of the tax payer's hard earned dollars. In our last legislative session, as a Committee Chairman, I was able to kill a senseless committee that was costing Arizona taxpayer's over $500,000 per year! Just imagine what we could save if every legislator aggressively exercised their legitimate, oversight responsibilities over our ever-expanding state agencies.
With a Republican party majority, we should champion greater governmental transparency and openness in order to foster increased trust by the electorate. This past session, I sponsored HB2586: Tax Credit Transparency bill. This bill would have required the AZ Department of Revenue to annually publish the companies who utilize state tax credits. This data would allow the public (and future legislatures) to determine which corporate tax credits produced jobs and ignited economic expansion, as they had been advertised. In general, transparency is popular with both sides of the aisle -- and the bill passed out of the House with a unanimous vote! Even though every House Democrat and every House Republican voted in favor of the bill, it was ultimately killed in the Senate's Commerce Committee by "big business" lobbyist. I plan to run this bill again next year!