Nevada Wins PAC News

Waste, Fraud & Abuse Not the Biggest Problems; These Are

By Ron Knecht – 13June2023

People often ask public officials about government waste, fraud and abuse – salient problems for sure. They’re often big problems, albeit difficult to ferret out, prove and remedy. The bigger and nearly universal problems resemble them, but are more subtle and difficult to show and remedy. Those problems are: excess government spending, leading to inefficiency and low productivity; proceduralism, the excessive and long public review processes, unduly slow response times and delays; and overreach, government actions that amount to pushing instead of pulling on a string.

Folks who’ve seen too many bright yellow clad workers standing at road re-construction sites have witnessed the low productivity of “Your Tax Dollars at Work.” When you get a run-around through a government bureaucracy or voice-mail jail, you’re feeling inefficiency in action. These and many other examples are the direct manifestations of excess spending. But what’s the cause? Philip K. Howard’s latest book, Not Accountable, adds excess spending, low productivity and inefficiency to the diagnosis of government dysfunction and reform he has addressed in previous excellent books (The Death of Common Sense, Life Without Lawyers, The Rule of Nobody, etc.).

His subtitle, Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions, focuses the problem: Government, politicians and bureaucracy managers have been co-opted by public employee unions that pursue their special interests to degrees very predatory upon taxpayers, voters and the public interest. Unions fight for the interests of their leadership (think Johnny Friendly in On the Waterfront): to get more members for more dues to increase their own pay; and for more political power via alliances with Democrats and other neo-liberal statist groups. There are other problems that diminish government efficiency and productivity and increase public spending, but Howard makes a strong legal argument that allowing public employee unions to collectively bargain and strike on staffing and compensation is such a big problem as to be unconstitutional.

Even the great private union champion, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, saw the fundamental problem of giving a predatory special interest group bargaining power equal to the public interest, so he opposed public unions. Half-a-century ago, Nevada allowed public unions to collectively bargain and strike on compensation issues with local governments, but not with the state. So, compensation and staffing overall at local levels exploded, while overall state employee compensation held at reasonable levels. Recently, the state allowed compensation collective bargaining and employee actions for state employees. Now the state will also struggle with agencies that don’t work (like many public schools), bad employees who can’t be fired, and runaway pension and other costs.

The elements of proceduralism – long-time conservative complaints – now plague a key liberal cause: building alternative energy projects such as solar, wind and geothermal. All over our country, it’s difficult to site and complete these projects to replace fossil fuels. Nevada has long had problems with contracting for and using computer, information technology and other projects it desperately needs – mostly due to applying to its own procurement processes the proceduralism with which it burdens private parties. Not only do these problems drive up costs to taxpayers and the public interest, but they also threaten disastrous shutdowns and collapses such as missed payrolls and billings.

Pushing-on-a-string problems result from the extensive overreach of government action and goals that has metastasized continuously for 140 years. As a current example: A recent federal report addresses health risks posed by loneliness and isolation of individuals in modern society. While the problem may or not be increasing but is profoundly important in any event, solutions are absolutely beyond the power of state and local agencies, let alone the federal government. 

Excessive government spending, proceduralism and overreach diminish greatly economic growth of our society. As Nobel economist Robert Lucas said, when one understands the power of growth to reduce poverty (locally and internationally), “it is hard to think about anything else.” For the poor, at least, we need vast reform on all these fronts.

Ron Knecht, MS, JD & PE(CA,) was Nevada Controller, higher education Regent and legislator; now Senior Policy Fellow at the Nevada Policy Research Institute. RonKnecht@aol.com.