Reign in Government Spending

As I prepared to get out of my car to campaign on the west end of the district, in Bluffdale over near Herriman, Enid Greene was closing her KSL program with a note on how the estimate of what this year's federal deficit will be has been increased to $1.4 trillion (or just more than $1.4 trillion).

As I got back in my car after knocking doors, Charlie Luke was taking his turn on KSL, taking up the topic Enid spoke of the week before, the Bush tax cuts, and how the federal deficit needs to be reigned in.

Sandwiched in between, a talk with Wells Wagner. Big on Wagner's agenda, in voting for public officials, is determining which of them are against big government. We discussed state and local issues more than the federal budget, but it was clear he would be against the irresponsible federal spending if we had discussed it more.

Wagner informed me -- I did not know this, and probably should double-check it -- the state budge went up 50 percent under Gov. Jon Huntsman. Wagner also questioned the need for each community having its own government, creating duplication of services. School districts? Too many. The split off of Canyons School District from the Jordan School District being the most recent mistake. He spoke of sitting in a meeting from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m., with those in the audience saying don't raise our taxes with this school district split. But, he noted, taxes increased 20 percent, anyway.

Wagner suggested school boards should not have authority to raise their budgets without some form of checks and balances to counter it.

He asked me how I felt about school spending, and I said since I have been campaigning, I have came to feel this is not an area we should cut. He suggested even the schools, though, may be administrative heavy.

And, as I walked to my car, I wondered if there are cuts in school administration that might should be considered with our economy as it is. Not that we want to put anyone out of a job, but what if we eliminated all vice principals, how much of a savings would that bring? Is it something we should consider?

Have we reached a point where we should consider laying off assistant school board administrators? Laying off anyone is not pleasant, but should the economy be prompting us to consider this?

I also thought about whether it would be less expensive to have a single city across the valley. I do not know. Yes, each city does have its own set of administrators, but with a single large city, would we simply have a single but humongous large staff underneath the administrators. After all, if Utah's government grew by 50 percent, that came without us dividing into two states, but rather just by growing the administration within our government. Perhaps instead of consolidating cities into one, the answer is to see whether the chief administrators can do hands-on work, instead of viewing themselves as just supervisors. Maybe that is already being done. I hope so.