Posted on: Monday, January 6, 2003

EDITORIAL
Budget policy can't be set across the board

Gov. Linda Lingle's decision to impose a 5 percent across-the-board spending cut on most state agencies will, if nothing else, inspire the new crew of administrators and their deputies to look more closely than ever at the budgets they have inherited.

Long-term, however, the exercise will probably have more educational than fiscal impact. That's because several years of squeezing and trimming have left relatively little fat to trim. The cuts are expected to save around $40 million, not small change, surely, but hardly enough to make a big dent in a two-year $7.5 billion general fund budget.

Our hope is that administrators will not take the across-the-board aspect of this cut too literally. Horizontal cuts simply make all programs a bit less effective.

If, however, the restriction forces departments to look for savings vertically, that is, by ranking all spending according to priority, real opportunities for reorganization and restructuring emerge.

It may make more sense to get rid of some low-priority programs altogether in order to preserve higher-priority operations.

In fact, Lingle used this very approach in announcing the cuts. While it is being described as a 5 percent across-the-board trim, in fact it is not. High-priority items, including federal mandates, personnel costs, debt service and spending on welfare, mental health and education instruction, will be spared.

That kind of priority setting and budget policy should be applied to every dollar spent and every dollar saved.