What the Governor’s Talking about
Today
Friday, January 29, 2010
Governor Outlines Next Steps in Transforming Government
to Improve Efficiency, Cut Costs
The governor today outlined an aggressive agenda to
further her efforts at transforming
Included are steps to further reduce the structural
deficit, facilitate local government and school district cost-cutting, enhance
accountability in government, and modernize the budget process. To advance these goals, the governor is
proposing to:
· Reduce costs by providing positive and negative incentives to encourage 7,000 eligible state employees and 39,000 eligible public school employees to retire
· Increase state employee participation in a new health care plan that maintains critical benefits for new state workers and their families while reducing the cost to state government by 21 percent
· Eliminate lifetime health care for legislators
·
Continue
reforming
· Shift to a two-year state budget cycle
· Audit state contracts annually and review all tax expenditures biennially to identify needed changes and savings
· Implement pay-as-you-go budgeting
·
Give public
employers such as local governments, schools and universities and their
employees the option to participate in the state of
· Require competitive bidding of contracts and additional shared services among local governments and schools
· End immunity for prescription drug companies to enable recovery of Medicaid dollars as in 49 other states
· Streamline elections by allowing no-reason absentee voting, online registration and elections-by-mail in some cases
· Require financial disclosures of all state elected officials and candidates
· Tighten ethics standards for elected officials, appointed officials and state contract managers
·
Better regulate
corporate special-interest campaign spending
Key
messages:
We need to create a new state government that better
serves the new
Government must focus on the things that matter most: job creation, education and providing critical services to those most in need.
Businesses, workers and families all have made tough
choices and are adapting to the realities of this new economy. State government must fundamentally
change as well.
The steps outlined by the governor today are just the
latest in a series of actions she has taken to streamline services and reduce
costs. Since taking office, the
governor has:
PROGRAMMING NOTES:
Governor to Appear on Face the Nation, State of the
The governor will appear live on CBS’s “Face the Nation
with Bob Schieffer” this Sunday, January 31.
Also this Sunday, the governor will appear in a taped
interview on CNN’s “State of the
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