There was news over the past couple of days about legislative leaders from both parties and in both chambers turning down the cost of living allowance built into their paycheck. This struck me as interesting given the fact that most of the legislature takes tens of thousands of dollars each year in other niceties. If the legislature wants to look at cutting expenses, let’s do it. I sent out a news release late this afternoon listing some of the cost cutting measures I have done over the past two years and comparing it to the COLA savings if the COLA would not be taken by all 253 legislators. We can save a little over $2 million over a four year period by not taking cost of living increases. My practices, (again, that I already do), could save the taxpayers in a four year period over $126 million. What I call “The Incumbency Protection Program” is very expensive to operate. Sending out calendars and newsletters to voters, I mean constituents, costs a lot of money. When I was a County Commissioner we didn’t even think of doing things like this, it would have been too expensive and it would have been wrong. We in the legislature have an opportunity to make some things right, let’s see if we can do it.

- John

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.