RE: House Budget Vote...Upon Further Review

In my previous post, I focused on the possible/probable drawbacks of Rep. Lima's midnight budget amendment that implemented an extensive review and appeal process before any privatization of State government services. Commenters to the post have looked at it from a different angle and may have been able to chicken soup out of chicken...

Commenter "brassband" was the first to see some positives for the Governor:

Here's my advice to Rep. Lima -- Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.

Rep. Lima and the House Leadership have given the Governor a tremendous opening here.

If I were in the Carcieri Adminstration, I would advise the Governor to embrace this proposal and issue the following statement:

"The House has provided us with an excellent first step toward a framework for large-scale privatization of state services. I am today instructing the Department of Administration to commence the sixty-day study period for ALL STATE SERVICES, so that we may begin to do what the Rep. Lima's bill suggests, and compare the cost of providing these services in-house with bloated union contracts, or go out to private industry which might produce considerable savings.

I thank Rep. Lima and the House Leadership for providing this road map toward efficient privatization."

This was seconded by "Will":

"She probably doesn't even realize some of what the language of the amendment actually allows the governor to do."

And "Greg":

Am I reading it wrong or does this bill give the Governor an excuse to get into the underwear drawer of every tiny department in the state and study their efficiency under the guise of 'studying the merits of privatization'? I mean, if the Gov is going to see if it's feasible for a private firm to do a job, he'll have to know exactly how well the PUBLIC employees are doing it, right?

Kudos, fellas. You may just be right. Whether the tradeoff is worth it or not, I suppose we'll find out.