Cost of Posting State Agencies' Spending Online Overstated

(The following was published in the Commentary section of The Post and Courier on April 3, 2008)

By Richard Eckstrom

State government spending has grown tremendously over the last several years, and the public realizes that personal income levels have not grown anywhere near as fast as government spending. For example, spending by state government jumped twelve percent last year, yet the average South Carolina family’s income rose by just four percent. Clearly, government spending is out of touch with the economic realities faced by ordinary citizens.

Taxpayers deserve to know where that money is going. The General Assembly is now considering legislation that would require state agencies and local governments to post their check registers and credit card statements online. This proposed legislation, if enacted, would make it easy for citizens to see for themselves exactly where their tax money goes. In turn, this could expose wasteful spending and remind state agencies and employees that they ultimately answer to the people they serve. This is exactly the kind of common sense, good government proposal that no one should oppose. Many may not realize that the Comptroller General’s office has already implemented a similar system – at no cost to state agencies – that makes expenditure information for most state agencies available via an easily accessible website.

Agency compliance with any additional online data posting required by the proposed legislation could be implemented in most cases without costing the taxpayers a dime. Yet a recently released “fiscal impact statement” obtained by the General Assembly dramatically overstates the cost of implementing this proposal. Misinformed or biased “number crunching” only confuses lawmakers and gives governments an excuse not to make their spending available to the public.

According to initial cost estimates for implementing this proposed legislation, the state would need as much as $5 million to fully implement an online check register and credit card database. These estimates, provided by a few assorted state agencies, are simply not credible to me. In fact, I already provide spending information on more than 70 state agencies via a website at absolutely no additional cost to taxpayers. The proposed legislation would simply require local governments and the remainder of state government to follow suit.

I am told that some officials are already using the dramatically inflated cost estimates as political cover. They are arguing that it is a waste of taxpayer money to inform taxpayers how their money is spent.

Most state agencies are already in compliance with the proposed law, whether or not they realize it. The majority of state agencies already report their finances to my office for me to process their check payments and in turn I summarize and electronically post their spending information on the state website. The entire program costs taxpayers nothing.

State agencies exempted from reporting to my office now maintain their own similar financial databases that they could make available, if they wanted to, via the Internet at virtually no additional cost, simply by using the same type search engine that we are already using.

Otherwise, school districts and county and municipal governments would be able to comply with the proposed law simply by scanning their check registers and credit card statements onto a computer and posting their scanned files to their agency’s website. Keep it simple. Require each governmental entity to decide the easiest and least expensive route to comply with the proposed legislation.

But rather than taking this common-sense approach, some are lamenting that a vast network of new computers, databases and new employees will be necessary to manage an imaginary new bureaucracy. It is the usual ploy. If the costs to implement can be inflated, they think that maybe they can make go away these efforts at implementing more and better government transparency. But let’s be clear – their inflated cost estimates, which are awfully flimsy, are the only thing shielding lawmakers from the justifiable anger of the voters if this proposed legislation fails.

This typical big-government mind-set, that an entirely new bureaucracy is required to reinvent the wheel, is bogus. The real facts are clear. The majority of government agencies essentially already comply with the proposed bill. Those that don’t comply have a no-cost, or very low-cost, example to follow. Complying is simply a matter of being willing to make it happen.

The technology exists today. The infrastructure exists today. My office will assist any state agency with the transition to transparency. State lawmakers should welcome the chance to shine the sun on state spending and to invite the public into the vaults of government data. It should not cost them a thing to do so. And if they do not, the public would be justified in asking what it is their elected officials don’t want taxpayers to see.

Richard Eckstrom, a former Certified Public Accountant from Greenville, is the Comptroller General of South Carolina and one of the five members of the State Budget and Control Board. He served one term as State Treasurer and was re-elected in 2006 as Comptroller General.

SECURING THE HOME FRONT

It is becoming clear to many Americans that the cost of our federal government’s reluctance to enforce immigration laws, to secure our borders, and to ensure our national security and the safety of American citizens, affects every facet of American life.

The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the net public cost for providing illegal immigrants with services like Medicaid, food assistance programs, our federal prison system, our court systems, and public education exceeds $10 billion annually.

Some states are recognizing the enormous costs and threats this problem poses to our American way of life. Many states recognize that employment is the most common incentive for illegal immigration to the United States, and some are beginning to hold scofflaw employers accountable for aiding and abetting criminal behavior. There is also growing awareness that those that hire illegal aliens are discriminating against U.S. citizens and legal resident immigrants. In response, some states are taking greater responsibility for addressing the crisis.

Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Georgia, and West Virginia have enacted tough new laws requiring or encouraging employers to verify every job applicant’s legal status using a federal data bank. These states have also imposed tough new sanctions on employers, including a progressive penalty system for those found guilty of hiring illegal workers. Arizona will permanently revoke an operator’s business license for a second offense. As a result, states that have been aggressively implementing new laws have dramatically reduced costs and problems, as illegal aliens have moved back home or to other states.

There are an estimated 76,000 illegal aliens in South Carolina, costing our taxpayers $87.4 million annually for education alone. Between 2000 and 2006, South Carolina’s K-12 student enrollment increased by over 34,000 students, and is projected to increase by a similar number by 2015. This increase will, of course, result in the need to build many new schools. But that’s just one small part of the toll this crisis presents our state.

Consider our transportation systems. Increased traffic congestion results in slower commute times, greater fuel costs, and more need to repair and build roads and highways. The SC Department of Transportation already has a $5 billion maintenance backlog. The illegal wave that’s flooding our state and nation also increases problems with air quality and solid waste disposal, requires additional low-income housing, dramatically increases costs for many of our hospitals and clogs their emergency rooms, and stretches capacity while increasing costs for law enforcement.

Despite these added costs to taxpayers, threats to national security, discrimination against hardworking citizens and legal immigrants, and threats to our personal safety, when our state Senate recently had the opportunity to address the problem, it yielded to special interests that seem driven by a desire for low-cost labor. In response to overwhelming support from the citizens of our state for tough, meaningful reform, the Senate passed a bill so loaded with loopholes it would accomplish little.

Fortunately, our state House of Representatives passed stronger legislation that would hold employers accountable for aiding and abetting the criminal act of invading our country and claiming a job rightfully belonging to a legal citizen. The House and Senate bills have gone to a “conference committee” to hammer out differences, and there is hope that the provisions in the stronger House bill will prevail.

It is disappointing that many elected officials would not only put the interests of special interests above the welfare of the citizens of South Carolina, but that they would do so on matters that concern the very security and survival of our state and nation. If they would do so on matters like this of such enormous cost and importance to the safety and security of us all, think of how ready they must be to put our interests below those of special interests on so many lesser matters.

This issue emphasizes again the need for every patriotic South Carolinian to know what is happening in our state, to speak out on the issues of our times, to hold our elected officials accountable, and to ensure on Election Day that those we elect truly do represent “we the people."

LET'S PUT THE CHILDREN FIRST

The South Carolina General Assembly has convened this month amid reports that our legislators will be addressing the way education is funded in our state. After forty years of “fixing” South Carolina’s schools, let’s hope they will seize the opportunity to think comprehensively and to truly change the culture in our school districts where half of all students entering high school drop out, and so many of those who remain chronically fail.

One of the advantages of South Carolina’s last-in-the-nation performance in education is that it provides the political impetus to think “outside the box.” Too often our goals in education, while well-intentioned, have been far too modest. For example, a former State education leader pledged that our State’s education performance would eventually rank among the upper half of states. But what does it mean to rank among the top 25 states, when our nation’s performance in math, reading and science ranks at the bottom of the world’s industrialized nations? Aren’t we aiming too low?

We need to acknowledge that while our legislators can provide powerful incentives for excellence, money alone is not the answer to what ails schools, including those in South Carolina. This has been proven many times, but nowhere as dramatically as in Kansas City, Missouri.

In 1985 a federal district judge, concerned about segregation and low-performance among minority students, ordered the state and the Kansas City school district to spend nearly $2 billion over 12 years to build new schools, integrate classrooms, and bring student test scores up to national norms. The money on a per-pupil basis was higher than any of the 280 largest districts in the country.

But rather than focusing on the individual needs of students and intensive tutoring to remediate problems, the money bought higher salaries, 15 new schools, an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a 25 acre wildlife sanctuary and zoo, a robotics lab, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, field trips to Mexico and Senegal, and taxis to replace school busses. After twelve years, test scores were no higher and there was more, not less, racial segregation.

In South Carolina some of our districts with the highest per-student spending have highly competitive administrative salaries, comfortable and modern district offices, and shameful school facilities for teachers and students. As with most bureaucracies, when money is targeted at organizational framework, there is a tendency for administrators to spend money on themselves first, and what little remains trickles down to teachers and students in the classroom. Our current system also results in many rules and regulations that tie the hands of principals and teachers. These rules and regulations result in a lot of uniformity among schools, but often don’t encourage excellence.

To ensure that education spending is directed to the classroom, where it is needed, many are proposing a concept called Weighted Student Funding. This is a per-student, rather than a per-district, approach where all students are assigned a foundational, or base, educational dollar value. That value is “weighted” higher, if need be, based on the relative difficulty to educate the student. In this way, economically disadvantaged and Special Education students would receive a greater amount to address their needs.

Once an appropriate amount of educational aid is assigned to a pupil, the student carries that money to his or her school directly, in the form of “real dollars,” and school-based budgeting is done annually based upon the total generated by all students who attend that school. With students free to choose among an array of schools, including charter schools, this mode of funding encourages excellence because schools are accountable to families for their performance, rather than merely to administrators for compliance with rules and regulations.

Many of South Carolina’s dedicated teachers recognize what needs to be done to improve the performance of their students, but their hands are tied by a command and control system that looks more like a totalitarian regime than the United States of America.

Even our students recognize the problems. I recently received student essays from a Midlands area high school in which one student concedes that “the only way for a district to get higher test scores is by rigorously challenging students in its schools.” The same student acknowledges the problem of social promotion, while another states that “our government is putting the money into the hands of irresponsible leaders who care more about themselves than helping our state get out of the position that it is in.”

By shifting funding from large, impersonal district bureaucracies to principals, teachers, and students, we can ensure that our education tax dollars are being used where most South Carolinians want them used, for the benefit of our children.

Every year in the life of a child is precious, and parents and their children do not have five or ten years for our Legislature to address the crisis that currently exists in our schools. Let’s encourage our legislators to put aside half measures and compromises and instead ensure that every family in our state has access to schools that work for children, and not just for those who oversee them.