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What Does Saving $168 Million Really Mean? · Commentary - TJ Meadows

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  Speaker 1: Governor Patrick Morrissey stepped before reporters Monday and announced what
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  Speaker 1: at first glance sounds like a staggering number, one hundred
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  Speaker 1: sixty eight million in identified savings for the state of
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  Speaker 1: West Virginia. And to be fair, that is a large number,
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  Speaker 1: but context matters. Now. One thing the administration deserves credit
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  Speaker 1: for is the idea of continuous improvement. Government is not
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  Speaker 1: traditionally built to constantly re examine itself the way private
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  Speaker 1: industry does. The notion that state agencies should regularly hunt
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  Speaker 1: for inefficiencies and rethink operations. Frankly, that's healthy. It should
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  Speaker 1: be applauded if it creates a long term cultural shift
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  Speaker 1: inside government. That alone has value. But there's another side
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  Speaker 1: to this conversation. Notice the repeated use of the word
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  Speaker 1: potential savings. That word matters. It's a safety valve. Potential
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  Speaker 1: is not the same thing as realized missing Monday was
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  Speaker 1: the kind of detailed cost benefit analyoy US businesses use
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  Speaker 1: every day before making investments. For example, if you buy
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  Speaker 1: body cameras hoping to reduce liability costs later, what's the
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  Speaker 1: break even point? How much must be spent upfront? How
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  Speaker 1: many years before savings actually exceed investment. Those are the
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  Speaker 1: kinds of questions taxpayers should expect answered, Because a dollar
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  Speaker 1: today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. If the
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  Speaker 1: state simply parked that money in a high yield account
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  Speaker 1: earning four percent interest, then any projected return from these
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  Speaker 1: reforms ought to beat that hurdle rate at a minimum.
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  Speaker 1: No business owner, no investor, no household makes major financial
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  Speaker 1: decisions without those kinds of numbers. First, why should government
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  Speaker 1: be any different? And then there's the scale of this
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  Speaker 1: announcement itself. That one hundred and sixty eight million equals
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  Speaker 1: roughly one percent of the total state budget once federal
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  Speaker 1: dollars are included. Economists often talk about bending the cost curve.
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  Speaker 1: In plain English, that means permanently slowing spending growth growth
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  Speaker 1: over time, not just finding a one time cut. Think
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  Speaker 1: about your own household. Maybe you cancel cable and save
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  Speaker 1: a few hundred dollars this year. That helps temporarily, But
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  Speaker 1: if groceries, insurance, utilities, and everything else keep climbing annually,
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  Speaker 1: your overall spending trend hasn't fundamentally changed. The media. In
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  Speaker 1: West Virginia, household income brings home roughly four thousand dollars
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  Speaker 1: a month after taxes one percent of that is about
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  Speaker 1: forty dollars monthly. If a full scale efficiency audit of
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  Speaker 1: your home, led by experts pulling out all the stops,
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  Speaker 1: only found forty dollars a month in savings, you'd probably
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  Speaker 1: conclude one of two things. Either most efficiencies had already
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  Speaker 1: been captured, or nobody was willing to make the truly
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  Speaker 1: painful cuts. The same logic applies to government. The only
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  Speaker 1: difference is the number of zeros. None of this means
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  Speaker 1: the effort is worthless, far from it. If those savings materialized,
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  Speaker 1: taxpayers should welcome them. One hundred sixty eight million dollars
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  Speaker 1: can absolutely fund meaningful priorities. It can do good things.
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  Speaker 1: But presenting the figure is transformational. While relying on projected
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  Speaker 1: savings and without fully public math explaining the assumptions behind
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  Speaker 1: the projections, that naturally invites skepticism, And honestly, the administration
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  Speaker 1: shouldn't resent that skepticism. It should embrace it, because when
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  Speaker 1: taxpayers ask to see the numbers, that's not opposition, that's
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  Speaker 1: just accountability.