Everyone wants lower taxes, so we wish Sen. David Trahan best of luck. He’s co-chair of the Legislature’s Taxation Committee, a position he occupies after leading last year’s successful campaign to repeal the Democratic tax reform bill passed in 2009.
Trahan has said he wants to lowerincome taxes, which is good. And pay for it, which might not be so easy.
But the wheels of the Legislature — which are lubricated with our dollars — have yet to start turning. Let’s see what happens.
A more circumspect part of Trahan’s plans is creating a committee to find efficiencies in government. This new panel would search for structural savings in state government and put the money into a fund to reduce the income tax. It would be wonderful — if it could work.
Maine already has a fine agency for finding efficiencies in its state government. It’s the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, which has made smart recommendations for making government better for five years. The reward for this toil has been seeing less than half of its recommendations adopted or considered by lawmakers during its existence. Trahan knows this, since he helped create the office, served on its advisory committee, and has been one of its vocal allies.
Given this example, it’s doubtful a new efficiency commission would find more success. (In fact, given the possibility for duplication of efforts, it could even make the process more inefficient.) The larger problem is that these outside panels just don’t work. They sound great in principle. Yet witness the Iraq Study Group or the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission on the federal level; each was touted for its expertise and findings, only to be undermined by the political process that created it.
Regardless of an outside panel’s mission, its work is still subject to the political body that makes final decisions.
Even the U.S. military’s Base Realignment and Closure process, upon which Trahan’s idea is based, is wholly subject to political influence.
Ideas for real efficiency are so often killed because they’re so politically distasteful. Efficiency requires making tough decisions that affect people; this is why lawmakers are eager to have somebody else make them.
Maine’s incoming Legislature, however, cannot allow itself to create a proxy for making choices the majority of its members were elected to make. Republicans won their majorities by pledging fiscal sustainability and promising to deflate the bureaucracy. These are not the jobs of some blue-ribbon panel.
Our suggestion is stop treating the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability as an afterthought. Either make a pathway for implementing its recommendations, or find lawmakers with the guts to fight for them.
Don’t let its taxpayer-funded work to save money for taxpayers go ignored a minute longer. It’s the right thing do to. And the most efficient.
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