State budgets under microscope this month

Every department in state government will get a turn in front the General Assembly's Joint Finance Committee this month, and lawmakers are on the hunt for places to consolidate, save money and work more efficiently.

The more they find, the less the legislature will need to resort to dramatic spending cuts and tax increases to emerge from a $350 million budget hole.

"People talk about finding waste and inefficiency, and we're always going to be looking for that, but over the past few years we've gotten rid of most of that low-hanging fruit," said Rep. Melanie George Smith, D-Bear, the committee's chair. "What we are doing this year is looking at what our priorities are."

MORE: Get a sense of the kind of tax hikes and spending cuts that may be necessary

MORE: A look at how JFC finished the last budget

The process starts Tuesday. A schedule of when each department will be heard can be found on the legislative website.

State agencies will find their budgets under more scrutiny than usual. In previous years, agencies would request new spending on top of what they already have, and legislators would largely focus their efforts on which of those requests to grant.

This year, George Smith said department heads can expect to see her committee comb through their budgets from top to bottom. Some of the questions they'll be asking: do we have other programs that do the same thing? What evidence do we have that this program is working? Could we have fewer administrators and more people "on the ground?" Is the state spending money on outside contracts for work that could be done in-house?

"The goal for us is not to eliminate anything that is directly providing services to people," George Smith said. "But any kind of overhead that is not necessary, we're going to take a very hard look at that."

Lawmakers have been particularly keen to reorganize the Department of Education, which some educators have criticized as too top-heavy and for spending millions of dollars on contract work.

The committee is not looking to lay off workers, George Smith said. But it may reorganize departments to streamline them, and it may eliminate some positions that are currently unfilled.

Contact Matthew Albright at malbright@delawareonline.com, (302) 324-2428 or on Twitter @TNJ_malbright.