This legislature has come up with some fairly foolish ideas. Here’s another one:
Legislation introduced this week in the House and Senate would establish an office to take over some of the fiscal analysis duties currently performed by Minnesota Management and Budget. It would provide lawmakers with information about the potential cost of legislation.
This is probably the result of the GOP House criticizing a fiscal note that came from MMB regarding the education bill. They didn’t like the idea that their education changes might cost something.
So, in their minds, the way to fix that is to create a new office that reports to the legislature regarding the fiscal analysis that is already provided by MMB.
And, more than likely, the “new” fiscal analysis will come up with different figures than MMB, which will lead to more senseless wrangling about what the budget for these bills should actually be.
Minnesota Management and Budget has rarely been questioned in the past. Their staff are experts in this regard and highly professional.
Yet nothing seems to escape the partisan nature of this legislature.
And, of course, Senator Tom Bakk has to jump on board with this ridiculous notion — so that he can have more control as well.
Once again, the people who get on their moral high horse and scream about $800,000 in commissioner salaries, are going to create a completely unnecessary agency at taxpayer expense and add more confusion to budgeting.
Sigh.
This post was written by Dave Mindeman and originally published on mnpACT! Progressive Political Blog. Follow Dave on Twitter: @newtbuster.
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Dave, you say that MMB staff are experts and highly professional, and that may be true most of the time, but remember these agency bosses serve at the pleasure of the Executive branch.
If it is true MMB has rarely been questioned in the past, their record under Dayton is an anomaly…
Remember e-pull tabs?
http://min.scout.com/story/1271765-budget-commish-questioned-on-stadium-finances
MMB was implicated in the decision to hire Jonathon Gruber
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/02/22/minnesota-investigation-never-bothered-to-ask-jonathan-gruber-to-provide-contract-details/
And, let us not forget that MMB was tagged in the legislative audit of the MNSure debacle
http://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/ped/pedrep/mnsure.pdf
I do agree that creating yet another government agency to keep track of government spending is a waste of time. When it comes to Democrats and spending, it’s turtles all the way down.