An odd thing happened the other day. I was at the campaign, polishing up a speech and making some phone calls when I learned that I was being attacked by some Republicans in the Legislature. That in itself is not terribly odd as some of them are still upset that I called for real ethics reform at the Capitol in December.

What was odd was the basis of their attack. They were upset that I made permanent cuts to the Secretary of State’s Office rather than employing a temporary budget gimmick known as furloughs to cut spending.

Huh?

I thought Republicans were for smaller government? We talk about it a lot. I certainly believe in it, which is why I cut my department’s budget by nearly 20% when I was Secretary of State. $1.9 million of the savings came when I eliminated 38 jobs that had become unneeded as we began to provide more and more customer services online.

This is one of the ways I met the targeted cuts the Governor asked every agency to make in these difficult times. I know the Governor supported my moves because he included them in his budget. I know the legislators were on board because they said so at the time.

But here they were on a Wednesday morning saying that I should have used furloughs instead. That I should not have made permanent budget and personnel cuts. That I should have kept unneeded personnel on the state payroll by employing budgetary shell games.

Well, I didn’t. Furloughs are only a temporary solution. They are what you do when you are afraid to make tough decisions. They are an easy way out and, in my experience that is almost never the right way.

And they are not a hallmark of real leadership.

I would have expected this from the Democrats in the Legislature who see government as a jobs program. Their logic is that of President Obama who apparently believes that creating government jobs will help the economy.

But Republicans are supposed to know better. We are supposed to be fighting to shrink government. We are supposed to realize that it is our responsibility as leaders to provide a service to the taxpayers as efficiently and inexpensively as we can. And we are supposed to know that government – at any level – is not a jobs program.

I certainly know that. I guess not all of us do.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 11:31 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.