Governor Matt Blunt today said he is opposed to Rep. Mark Wright's plan to reform the way fee license offices are run.
Blunt was, well . . . blunt. When I asked the Governor if he supported Wright's plan, he gave me a flat-out "No." Like I said, he was blunt.
Blunt said he may consider different components of it, but not the package as a whole. "How long you wait in line shouldn't impact if you pay a fee or not," Blunt said. Wright has proposed to eliminate fees for people that wait more than 30 minutes in line. Publicly and privately, members of both parties have downplayed the chances of that part ever becoming law.
Blunt said he has real issues with mandating non-for-profits running the offices. Right now, he said about a quarter of the offices are already run by non-profits. "Many do good jobs, some don't do as good a job," Blunt said. The Governor also said the awarding of contracts should be based on who will provide the best service. "Sometimes that's the non-for-profit, sometimes not."
Blunt also said he has already taken steps to reform the system, by increasing the accessibility and hours of service, right here in Greene County.
5 comments:
If the Governor is going to claim he fairly considers awarding fee offices to not for profits when they can efficiently run the offices then the Governor should explain to the people of Springfield why he awarded the local contract to a political contributor (the wife of his fathers chief political fundraiser) instead of awarding it to the Springfield School foundation which applied for the office (or one of the other not-for-profits which appliend for the office and would have used revenues for charitable purposes). Does he think the Springfield school system is not capable of hiring competent people to run the office? Couldn't the school system have hired the same employees his contributor hired?
The schools sure could have used the extra revenue.
The analysis is this: transaction fees in Springfield office in 2004- $975,000. Average fee agent overhead 45% (according to survey of past fee agents--includes many smaller offices then Springfield office where overhead as a percentage of fees is higher then in Springfield) equals net profit of $532,250. Overhead includes slaaries and often fee agents pay themselves a salary which would not be included in this profit calculation. Net $532,500 for schools or $532,500 for political cronies. Blunt picked his cronies. Harpool and Wright pick the schools.
Does this mean: Only government should run drivers' licence offices?
If so, that's indicative of a larger mental-disorder idea: Only government should run business.
It is most definitely NOT the job of gov't to require businesses to provide insurance to their employees. It is the responsibility of the employee to buy his own.
I'm not saying gov't has no place in our lives, "we are"... but it definitely has no place being in every aspect of our lives, either. Everything in moderation, remember?
That which governs least, governs best. Thomas Paine said that. Of course, one could just say he was a proto-anarchist, powdered-wig-wearing Founding Father/troublemaker/anti-British-Empire terrorist irritant with a musket and a quill pen...
If the sticking point is "people running the fee offices have political connections"... then find a way to prevent those w/political connections, from running those offices.
However, this IS a free country... or, at least, it is for now...
IMO, this is just a microcosm of the "only gov't can do certain things" mentality. Kind of like when Tom Daschle said, re: airline security screeners... "You can't professionalize unless you federalize", which was code for "We want a new batch of federal gov't union employees, as they mostly vote for us"...
This has led to thinking of "privatization" as a four-letter word. Sad, isn't it?
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