I find it interesting that my opponent in the race for State Senate, who served her entire career in the largest state department (HHS) was not criticized for cutting 66% of the funding for cancer screening but didn’t touch the Land and Community Heritage Investment Program additional funding. Does this mean she worries more about open space than identifying and treating cancer in people?

I also find it interesting that one of the ideas I put forth in my campaign was to look at and eliminate wasteful spending, including the State Nursery and State Liquor Stores. I kept saying that NH needs to get out of the retail business with liquor. This is not a new idea and has been presented through various bills in the legislature over the years, though not for some time now. It makes sense that government should not be in the free market and should open up competition. There is revenue made but not near the potential that a private business could achieve. There is also the massive overhead cost the state bears not to mention the lost tax revenues to the 17 towns that have state owned stores instead of leased stores.

My idea was simple. The state has the mechanism in place, because of beer and wine sales, to monitor all liquor sales. The state would collect the Liquor Tax from the retailer, where sales would increase with the elimination of limited sales opportunities thereby allowing an increase in tax revenues without the burdening overhead costs. Then I read in amusement that Governor Lynch is now open to this idea as presented by the Liquor Commission. He wants to make it happen. This is a good step but still short of what we need.

Then I read about the Gov’s plan to put the 5.5% pay increase to state employees on hold to save $7 MILLION. This is a drop in the bucket but those drops do add up. This plan started some controversy since the unions don’t care how much tax we pay to meet their demands. Besides that point WHY do state employees get 5.5% raises when the COLA rate and CPI were around 3% when these contracts were signed. I don’t know anyone that gets a normal raise larger than the rate of inflation.

The unions were able to come back with a counter-offer. Let’s go to 4 day work-weeks. The employees would still be working the same amount of hours but the savings in lighting and heating the buildings would produce “Millions of Dollars” in savings. That way the employees can still get these outrageous raises and all are happy.

But as they say “the Devil is in the Details” and the devil in this case is the fact that the employees would now be working overtime hours and be paid more per week for the same amount of hours. I don’t like giving raises that are beyond the pale but I do have to agree that a contract was signed and the only way to stop it is through re-negotiation. Why don’t we go with the shortened work-week and shortened hours of the employees, saving the overtime pay? In fact just think about it. If 5 days worth of work can be done in 4 days then maybe we have too many employees on OUR dime. There’s a thought to saving money and balancing the budget.

More of these budget saving ideas being presented in the next post.