While the Legislature dithers on real cuts and Congress blows through cash like it was carbon credits, local leaders are taking action to reduce budgets without putting a tax-boot on the throats of struggling businesses and taxpayers.
Sacramento County Supervisor Roberta MacGlashan, after ceremoniously crumpling and hurling yet another incomplete staff budget memo into the trash, assembled a citizen’s panel to review and make recommendations on budget cuts, efficiency and vital programs.
And unlike the photo-op commissions created by the state, this group – Kitchen Conversations Citizen Budget Committee – will meet for only a few weeks, make specific recommendations, then go back to living regular lives.
Unlike California’s Citizen Performance Review, which came up with a pretty good series of recommendations to save California taxpayers money but then was mostly shelved – a waste of time, money and paper; MacGlashan has a reputation of being tenacious in protecting taxpayers.
While budgets were still flush several years ago, MacGlashan took an unpopular stand to cut a $2.5 million program giving free healthcare to citizens of other countries – creating quite a stir.
But then the times caught up with MacGlashan, and after fighting for more than 3 years to cut this costly program, Sacramento County finally eliminated the voluntary program. Other counties, like Contra Costa later followed suit.
Maybe Legislators and the US Congress can take a page from Sacramento and work to reduce spending instead of saddling small businesses and taxpayers with more "temporary" tax increases.