Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 21, 1993 TAG: 9312300012
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
There's just too much "micromanagement from Richmond," says Del. George Grayson, the Williamsburg Democrat. As a professor at The College of William and Mary, one of those outposts of state government, Grayson may be in better position than many legislators to know whereof he speaks.
Taking a cue from the White House, Grayson - here we go again - has proposed reinventing state government.
OK. He concedes Virginia's government is not in the same league with the creaky, gummed-up all-consuming contraption in Washington. For one thing, only 5 percent of state workers hold management positions, compared to 17 percent at the federal level.
The executive branch in Richmond is also able to exert greater control over the bureaucracy than in Washington, where a full-time Congress effectively shields the federal bureaucracy from many budget and personnel cutbacks and insulates inefficiency more than can Virginia's part-time legislature.
Oh, yes - another big difference: Virginia is constitutionally required to have a balanced budget.
Even so, says Grayson, state government's machinery has too many loose screws and rusty crankpins. It's out of gear with basic principles of modern management that would make it more efficient and user-friendly.
It could be reinvented, says the lawmaker, to eliminate duplication and unnecessary regulations, to decentralize responsibility by giving front-line managers greater authority to manage, to link pay and job security to job performance by state employees, to greatly reduce state mandates on local governments and otherwise keep its customers better satisfied.
Does all this sound familiar? It should.
It was the tune-up tune heard not just from Vice President Al Gore's reinvention initiative at the federal level, but, to a degree, from the Virginia gubernatorial campaign as well.
Republican George Allen and Democrat Mary Sue Terry are playing it with only slightly differing words and music. (Gov. Wilder boasts he's already streamlined state government to make it more efficient.)
Grayson, though, is offering some proposals of a specificity not heard from either Allen or Terry.
He says, for instance, that thousands of dollars could be saved if state agencies, colleges and universities weren't required to buy "on contract" - meaning from a state-approved list of vendors.
Now, to go "off contract," they must "beat" the contract vendors by 25 percent. But because micro-management from Richmond dictates time-consuming and costly bidding procedures and paperwork, many state agencies will purchase needlessly expensive and sometimes inferior items "on contract" because it's easier.
Grayson's proposals, outlined in a lengthy position paper, are not likely to get him a spot on the Letterman show, a la Gore. His complaints that five sentences in state law dealing with environmental impact reviews have generated a 27-page book of state regulations don't have the comic zing of Gore's findings of regulatory overkill, such as the legendary federal specifications for ashtrays.
But the Williamsburg delegate's ideas shouldn't be ignored by the next governor and General Assembly. State government may not require total reinventing, but, after 200 years, it could stand at the very least a good lube job.
by CNB