Where is the surplus?

I suspect that there is a lot of money lying around in state government. As a former government worker, a teacher, I can remember hearing every year, "use it or lose it". Spend every penny, or next year's budget will be cut. I bought things I did not desperately need.

I assume the same thing is going on now, although in these hard times, perhaps to a lesser extent. Budget requests routinely overestimate the cost of what ever is being done; there is almost always a surplus to use or lose.

The question is; how do we find those funds and recapture them to be used somewhere else?

We cannot expect the people at the top of each of these oligarchical pyramids to point to funds they aren't using.

Take for example NM Public Education Secretary Veronica Garcia. As the head of the NMPED, she is responsible for any loose money still floating around. But she is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

The rock; the pressure to find that money to free it up for appropriate use.

The hard place; she doesn't want to admit there is money floating around that she doesn't know about, or isn't using.

I would suppose that every department head in state government is in the same boat; they could find some unencumbered money under their control, but they don't want to admit on the record, they do.

If we want to find the loose money in government, we need to provide the opportunity for those at the bottom of the oligarchy to be able to point to it, and to any other waste, without suffering retaliation for their candor.




photo Mark Bralley