In a large bureaucracy, there is perhaps no one better suited to offer up cost-saving ideas than the agency’s day-to-day staff. Until now, however, these employees have had no real forum in which to share their suggestions and ideas-but House Bill 2439 seeks to change all that.
HB 2439, scheduled for a hearing today in Senate Committee on Government Organization, would require each state agency with 1,500 employees or more to setup a website where employees can submit efficiency and operational suggestions. These ideas can then be viewed and voted on by the public in real-time which should, ideally, give agency directors a pretty fair indication of where they should look to cut costs.
And to help the public better understand some of the ideas they are reading about, the bill also instructs the Legislative Budget Board (LBB) to post certain budget-related documents online as they are prepared by the LBB. The cost to do all of this is expected to be minimal.
Assuming the bill makes it out of the Senate, HB 2439 could be a hugely positive step forward in the quest to find efficiencies and promote transparency in the state’s largest bureaucratic institutions.
-James Quintero