Leading by example....Today's NDP way!

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2010/03/24/mb-pay-cut-ministers-manitoba.html

Manitoba's NDP government is going to rewrite its balanced budget
law in part to let cabinet ministers avoid a 40 per cent pay cut.
The law requires cabinet ministers to take a 20 per cent pay cut
whenever the province's finances are in deficit over a four-year
average.
If the same thing happens in a second consecutive year, the pay cut doubles to 40 per cent.
Premier Greg Selinger said Wednesday that 40 per cent provision is
one of many being eliminated as the province deals with deficits
forecast to run through 2014.


... so, Selinger's logic is? We're dealing with the deficit by removing the clause in that pesky and fully gutted "balanced budget" legislation to do what exactly? Somehow paying his cabinet more is going to help the deficit?

Horesh*t!

nice eh? They at first make it sound all awesome... Say.. us cabinet ministers are taking a 20% cut in pay.. and everyone is like.. oh well thats pretty nice of them...

Then we find out... that they are actually reducing the cut they are required by law to take

Is anyone really surprised by this?

Yet they keep getting reelected. Go figure.

Too bad the original legislation did not require 100% house agreement to change.

I don't pretend to be an accountant, or even that smart with money...heck, if I was...I'd be traveling much more than I do, and not living in the West End.

That said...simplifying a city budget seems quite easy...and certainly balancing it seems easier.

The real reason they can't seem to balance the budget is because they want to hold people's hands while they do it. They want to claim that "no jobs were lost", or that "no services were cut".

You CAN'T balance a budget without making some sacrifices if you're income is less than your outflow.

Changing the rules doesn't change the numbers...it just makes (some) people "feel good".

This is one reason the early politicians were all business-people FIRST, and politicians SECOND!!!
So that they didn't have to worry about their own salaries, and quite often would put it back in the budget, or donate it off to their favourite charity cause.

Here's a few of my suggestions for the government to balance its budget:
1) ELIMINATE REDUNDANCY
Dealing with the city for many things, there is WAY too much redundancy of jobs and responsibilities spread throughout the system. Yes, some people would lose their current jobs, but it's quite likely there are jobs that are required where they could be "moved" with little or no reduction in pay.
The people doing the work are not the issue, the redundancy of duties is.
The Province is no better.

2) CONSOLIDATE RESOURCES
Sure, City Hall is downtown, and is reasonably centralized...but why did the city just move 40 people to a new building to the south end of the city?
The Province seems to run the same way. Instead of having a full building for the Province, they have a floor (or few) in each of many buildings scattered around the Province. Granted, outside of Winnipeg it makes sense to have offices, but why are there a dozen offices in the city of Winnipeg alone?

3) USE BUYING POWER
Every office uses paper, filing folders, etc.
So why does every office order individually from a supplier?
Does that supplier provide a discount based upon ALL the offices combined? or only on the purchases of each individual office?
How often does the government "shop" for the better deal?
This would apply for most anything, vehicles, paper, etc.

4) LOSE THE OVERHEAD
I said it in the medical insurance thread...overhead is rampant in government.
We go to meetings for new projects, and the government sends in 6 people.
There's the program coordinator and his assistant.
The Safety Coordinator
The Project Manager
The Engineer
Some lady who works in the area we're going to develop who wants to know what's going on (sometimes there's 2 or 3 of them)

Of those people...only 2 really need to be there...and in most cases, nothing is determined at those meetings anyway...just the same discussion we had about another project 2 weeks earlier...only this time about a different address.

All paid for by the taxpayers.

Governments should follow what some businesses are doing and consider adopting open source software. Pollard Bank Note is just one such company that saves money buy not buying proprietary operating systems and proprietary office suites. Businesses and governments around the world are switching, although not at a rate that would threaten to shut down companies like Microsoft. Open source is not a viable solution for everyone but it's worth looking into. The Provincial Legal Aid department uses open source, such as OpenOffice, or used to.