anarchival

Last night, Governor Bredesen revealed his final budget proposal, which includes additional layoffs of 1,363 people in addition to the elimination of 456 unfilled positions. This follows the elimination of over 2,000 State jobs in last year’s budget proposal, even though while some State workers were losing their jobs, others were getting pay raises. The State payroll amounts to only 1% to 9% of the total State budget (depending on who you talk to), and The Tennessee State Employees Association has rightfully pointed out that there are several things the government could do to preserve those jobs while still cutting expenses.

Laying off State employees has nothing to do with reducing spending and everything to do with the appearance of reducing spending. It’s a political ploy to look as though the government is being fiscally responsible, while they’re actually increasing spending and often cutting the things that would benefit their constituents the most. Voters crying out for “smaller government,” inevitably paid for like this in the life blood of actual jobs, are just as much to blame for these measures as the leaders who respond to their demands in such a counter-productive way. Where government gives back to taxpayers with jobs and services, they are doing good work. Making the government smaller by making it less of a service organization to its people only makes its existence more tyrannical.

So what are we to do in a bad budget year? In 2008, the Executive branch spent as much on copy paper (around $2.6 million) as it did to feed every inmate in Tennessee prisons (around $2.7 million), or approximately 1/5 of the Department of Health’s pharmaceutical spending (approximately $11 million). Was that really necessary? Could we save a few more jobs by saving some paper? Measures like that may seem insignificant in terms of a $400 million budget cut, but every person who has ever budgeted a household can tell you that small efficiencies eventually add up to great surpluses, and it’s certainly not insignificant to the flesh and blood individuals who would get to keep their jobs because of it.

Laying off State employees reduces the services ever more needy Tennesseans will be able to receive, drains the State of skilled workers who know how their programs operate (knowledge we may never get back after they are gone, thus making government even more inefficient in the long term), and creates even more unemployment in a State that is already acutely in need of more jobs. Every State worker spends their paycheck here, giving back their salaries in terms of goods, services, and tax revenues.The state government, in fact, is the largest employer in Tennessee. It does not set a good example for other entities doing business here when the government pursues more and more layoffs instead of making the sacrifices necessary to preserve jobs for Tennesseans. By creating more unemployment, the State is merely feeding the economic fire that got us here in the first place.

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