October 03, 2009 05:25 PM UTC

Waste & Inefficiency in the state budget

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• by: DavidThi808

Update: Read this diary first – there are some major errors in the below quotes. Sorry.

We Dems constantly speak about how we need to increase revenues to the state. And the GOP counters that what we need to do is eliminate waste & inefficiency in the state budget. And we counter – there isn’t any.

And then comes this little item.

CollegeInvest, the agency that runs Colorado’s student-loan forgiveness and scholarship plans, lost track of many of the students it was supposed to help, managing to distribute only $91,000 of the $3.8 million lawmakers expected it to hand out last year.

The agency also spent $12 million in administrative expenses, not including salaries and benefits for 37 employees, a state audit found.

First off, this needs to be fixed today. We’re in a horrible recession where we want to get as many students as possible in college (and out of the job market) – and yet they’re funding virtually nothing.

Second, what kind of administrative expenses are they facing? This sounds like a group that is totally out of control.

The agency spent almost $10 in administrative costs for every $1 disbursed in the Early Achiever Scholarships, the audit said.

The GOP is going to use this as exhibit #1 in the election that the state revenue problem is incompetent government, not taxation levels. And this case is so egrerious, and on an issue that directly impacts every family with kids headed to college, that it will resonate.

And we Dems have to be honest – if there is one case this bad, then there likely are others. We all insisted that we truly had cut everything to the bone and no counter-examples proved that. Well with a counter-example we now need to continue looking for the additional cases.

Oh, and the people running CollegeInvest, if final investigation shows gross incompetence, need to be fired.