Eliminating Wasteful Government Positions

This week in Madison, the Legislature continued to take the positive steps necessary to restore some fiscal discipline to our state.

As families across Wisconsin take steps to ensure that their checkbooks remain balanced, so too must state government learn to find more ways to save taxpayer money and live within its means. One step which I support aims to do just that, and eliminates several elected positions whose job responsibilities no longer merit the use of taxpayer dollars.

The State Treasurer and the Secretary of State are both positions currently mandated by the state constitution. While these positions might have originally been necessary, many of their original duties have changed over the years and rendered their responsibilities obsolete. Assembly Joint Resolution 26 aims to reassess the necessity of these offices and keeps focused on our legislative promise to look at ways that we can reduce government waste and inefficiency.

Interestingly, Kurt Schuller the State Treasurer has himself insisted that the position is a waste of taxpayer dollars and supports eliminating his own position.

Currently, the duties of the Secretary of State are limited to maintaining the acts of the Legislature and Governor and keeping the Great Seal of Wisconsin and affixing it to all official acts of the Governor.

Previous responsibilities such as handling the notaries public or being responsible for trademark and trade names were given instead to the Department of Financial Institutions. The State Treasurer no longer handles the EdVest program or the Local Government Investment Pool, since these responsibilities were recently given to the Department of Administration. With limited work to be done, many of these offices are no longer proving themselves to be a worthwhile investment by our state’s citizens.

During these troubling economic times it is essential that we maintain our focus on fiscal discipline and limited government. Just as families across Wisconsin have to find new ways to save money so too does state government. The curtailment of government waste is one step which we can take which will ensure that government lives within its means.