Replies

Freeze salaries...Reagan did it in the 60's...I know because my mom was a state employee and she hated it, but we somehow made it.

That's fine; some employees will quit, and due to the budget situation, the positions won't be filled. It will take longer for government services to get done.

Retire/layoff a portion of local, county, state school administrators. They will always be the first thing that comes to my mind...they go before one teacher (oh, and fire substandard teachers - break the union) (the education beaurocracy is out of it's mind)

How many can you cut (and how much do you save) before there is an impact on the effective management of the educational system? I don't know the answer to that. I suspect that the number of administrators required to effectively manage a county school system is more than 1. Good schools require good administrators, but I don't know how many they require. I do know that NCLB is requiring more supervision of school-by-school success.

Delay/cancel city/county/state building construction - they can stay in old buildings a few more years.

That's a separate budget category, not general fund. Same goes for transportation projects.

Remove any overlapping state/county/city legislation - how many people need to take their cut of the cash cow before it gets to the people in need (local taxes stay local, state stays in the state)

Very good idea, but long in implementation and slow to accrue savings. The Measure 30 plan was looking at the next two years.

Sell off official transportation (let the elected officials use their own vehicles and reimburse)

How much would that save?

Renegotiate or delay city/county/state contracts

The amount that would be saved would depend on the size of the contract.

If you don't think there is a 20-30% city/county/state "fat" factor that can be excised, then we will agree to disagree.

I don't "think"; I try to base my opinions on actual numbers. I don't have numbers that would indicate whether 20-30% is feasible or not. In the articles I posted, the Republican legislator indicated that substantial cuts had been made and he didn't sound optimistic about finding much room for more. He would probably have a much better perspective on that than I would.