46 Comments - A Jack - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 10:58 am: I thought he ran on reducing waste. It’s still here after almost two years? What has he been doing…. - Xavier Woods - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 10:58 am: Turnaround Agenda. All day. Every day. - RNUG - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:01 am: How many times have we spent the “waste, fraud and abuse” savings? - JS Mill - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:02 am: Boy does he love to use “bureaucracy” as a pejorative. Big Brain apparently does not get that he is the chief bureaucrat by his definition of “bureaucracy.” - Anonymous - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:03 am: What in the world is he talking about? Is he suggesting state funding of local police forces? He signed an FY17 budget that’s $8 billion out of whack. - Anon - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:03 am: Imagine how much money we could save if we stopped having to pay out settlements for ridiculous things that police officers shouldn’t have done in the first place. - Michelle Flaherty - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:05 am: A vehicle-registration surcharge that has raised $58 million and transformed the Illinois State Police fleet from a junkyard of overtaxed hulks to a stable of safe and more efficient cruisers is stalled because of Gov. Bruce Rauner’s moratorium on vehicle purchases. http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/program-to-replace-state-police-cars-stalled-by-budget-impasse/ - Norseman - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:06 am: Typical phony Rauner rhetoric. Is he going to trot out that ridiculous list of wasteful spending again. Be careful Bruce, a lot of people get into trouble lying to the cops. - A Jack - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:06 am: How much did the state waste on the road trip to Decatur. For that matter, how much did the state waste on the turn-around grand tour? - HRC2016 - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:07 am: Oh and by the way, I want to reduce your earned pension benefits even more! - Hamlet's Ghost - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:07 am: @Michelle Flaherty Has that fund been swept yet? - The Captain - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:07 am: Cops are union government employees so I guess he left out the part where he wants to eliminate collective bargaining and reduce their pay and benefits. This is the “waste” he means. - Ray del Camino - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:07 am: He’s had two years to identify all that waste, fraud, and abuse. Where’s the list? - Present - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:10 am: Bureaucracy. Like 48 spsa’s and approx 80 psa’s at doIt. Like that? - Reality Check - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:11 am: What The Captain said. Also I assume he left out the part where he opposes the interest arbitration process to which all those officers have a right for resolving contract disputes. - Honeybear - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:14 am: The biggest wastefulness that I have seen is coming from Rauner administration officials hiring consultants and consulting companies for millions of dollars. Things that were once done in house are farmed out like candies. - kimocat - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:14 am: Hey — we could hire a lot more of you guys if we could pay peanuts and ax your benefits? Wouldn’t that be great? /sn - Honeybear - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:15 am: Look the police officers know what he’s doing when he tries to break off healthcare from collective bargaining with the FOP. God I just can’t abide the perfidy. - @MisterJayEm - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:17 am: “Reduce wasteful bureaucracy, the cost of bureaucracy in our government, and free up money that we can put into public safety.” At least Nixon had the decency to stop peddling the ’secret plan to end the war’ lie after he got elected. – MrJM - Three times - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:20 am: Bruce, you are the governor. You oversee that bureaucracy. And you are governor of a state that grants much power to the exec branch in it’s constitution. You don’t have to spend “wasteful” appropriation by the legislature if you don’t want to. - Derp - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:26 am: All the state’s problems boil down to wasteful spending and bureaucracy. Gun violence in Chicago? Gotta get rid of all that bureaucracy. /s - Anon - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:29 am: A real one track mind. He’s starting to remind me of Don Quixote. - Archiesmom - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:30 am: This sort of oversimplification is mindboggling. But it works! And that boggles my mind as well. - Annonin' - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:32 am: This does not do justice to just how disconnected BigBrain looked at this event. For instance he “forgot” to mention how he actually signed a bill to reform policing in 2015. We should also note he “forgot” to tell the cops he is pushin’ to freeze property taxes which pay for cops and other stuff. But hey him gave another reason to go to Decatur….hmmm. Hope did not get cyber attacked while there. - Michelle Flaherty - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:42 am: Rauner’s message: Look, I want to free up more money for public safety, I just don’t want it going to your salaries or retirements. OK? And I’m not a big fan of this police union system either. Did I miss anything in explaining my support for law enforcement? - Cassandra - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:56 am: Well, precisely. What wasteful bureaucracy and spending has the guv been cutting. Yes, the prison population has apparently gone down a bit, and that’s great. Other than that, what? And what actual savings? Talk about “pension reform” doesn’t count, until it actually happens. It won’t. - Anonymous - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 11:57 am: Beats talkng about the $8 billion FY17 deficit and the gutting of higher ed and the social safety infrastructure. Those things are real. - steward - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 12:01 pm: Dear police officers, Rauner wants your town to be able to opt out of bargaining with you for certain things. He wants your town to be able to declare itself a right to work zone which will mean less money for your union. He wants your town to be able to bankrupt out of your pension. And now, as someone else has pointed out, he is telling state troopers that healthcare is not a mandatory subject of bargaining and has filed an unfair labor practice against their union for “daring” to bargain over healthcare. - Winnin' - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 12:03 pm: Another pronouncement outside the Sfld cat box. The locals just eat it up. No Amanda Vinicky to keep him honest. - Anonymous - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 12:08 pm: Yep Bruce. There no wasteful bureaucracy in the police interdiction units. That’s laughable. A whole institution of wasteful government bureaucracy is entrenched in the war on drugs, which by the way I would say we’re not winning. So Bruce’s proposal is eliminate one form of bureaucracy and transfer the money to another form of bureaucracy. One thing Bruce is good at is pandering to his audience. Vote accordingly. - pundent - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 12:16 pm: Presumably the “wasteful bureaucracy” exists in the state agencies that he’s ultimately responsible for. So exactly who is this critique intended for? He does understand that these are his agencies and his organization right? - justdoingtime - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 12:24 pm: How’s this for wasteful spending. IDOC is getting ready to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get new style uniforms for officers. The uniform that currently is being used has been around less than 15 years and look professional.One more example of wasteful state spending. - Anonymous - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 12:48 pm: anon @ 11:03 a.m.- “Imagine how much money we could save if we stopped having to pay out settlements for ridiculous things that police officers shouldn’t have done in the first place.” Good point. Chicago paid out how much to Jon Burge’s victims alone over 30 years? $30 million or so? Burge is still collecting his CPD pension because the police pension board is loaded with cops. Two suggestions if Rauner wants to cut wasteful spending for the police bureaucracy: stop forcing government entities (taxpayers) to pay for the legal defense, civil or criminal, of cops who commit crimes. Pass legislation if necessary allowing them to opt out after a vote on the record. Next, many small towns in rural areas are disbanding their police departments and contracting coverage from the county sheriffs. Saves millions in retirement costs. - Publius - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 12:50 pm: Well mr. Governor propose a balance state budget including your “wasteful bureaucracy” cuts and then debate it. Oh that’s how government is suppose to work. Propose a budget to the GA. They pass a budget and the governor line item vetos anything he does not want. This governor only wants political power not the “good government” he pretends to be fight’n for. Stop the buy’n the General Assembly and propose a balanced budget. - anon - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 12:54 pm: Illinois has a smaller state burocracy per capita than at least 48 states — an inconvenient truth to those who scapegoat state workers for the budget meltdown. - Publius - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 1:08 pm: Governor Rauner, Day 610 and no proposed balanced budget.? - Chuck Leonetti - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 1:13 pm: Where’s your budget at, Mr Governor? How long have you been in office? Chuck Leonetti - Cassandra - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 1:15 pm: The bureaucracy may be smaller but Illinois probably contracts out more work to the private sector than other states. Whether you agree with this approach or not, it does reduce the number of government bureaucrats required to do the work. But that’s not the point here. The point is, the governor,and many other politicians of both parties clamor endlessly about wasteful bureaucracy. Is there any? Probably. We live in the age of galloping technology, But what counts is what are they doing about it. Nothing much, it would seem, but the spotlight is on Rauner at the moment, since he claims it’s a problem and he has been in office nearly 2 years. - Earnest - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 2:33 pm: The never-ending campaign to distract from his intentional destruction of higher education and human services and to increase his leverage by digging the state into an ever-deepening fiscal hole. He is winning this campaign in brilliant fashion. - Ghost - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 3:20 pm: MrJM ftw - Mama Retired - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 3:22 pm: Does Rauner plan to contract out the police jobs too? - Langhorne - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 3:24 pm: Reduce wasteful bureaucracy–aka, magic BeanS. Reduce wasteful spending–highest paid state employees in the country, right? Get rid of unions. Reduce health care by half, while doubling the cost to the employee. Thats the kind of waste bruce wants to cut. - yeah - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 3:57 pm: - Langhorne - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 3:24 pm: Dear Langhorne, Until Governor Rauner, we never had over-paid $100K a year scheduler for the first lady. - DuPage Dave - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 6:56 pm: The holy trinity of the Republican catechism is “waste, fraud and abuse”. They are never deterred from reciting that phrase despite the fact that once in office they can’t seem to find solid examples adding up to the imaginary numbers they put out while campaigning. In this Rauner is far from alone. But yes, as many have said, Rauner seems oblivious to the fact that he is, indeed, the Governor of Illinois, and could supposedly do something about the situation. I know in the agency where I work we’ve seen zero effort from Rauner’s team on this topic. - Harvest76 - Wednesday, Sep 14, 16 @ 10:27 pm: Until he offers specific policy changes, I’m only hearing campaignin’ words, and that does not a difference make. - Honeybear - Thursday, Sep 15, 16 @ 9:17 am: –The bureaucracy may be smaller but Illinois probably contracts out more work to the private sector than other states. Whether you agree with this approach or not, it does reduce the number of government bureaucrats required to do the work. But that’s not the point here. The point is, the governor,and many other politicians of both parties clamor endlessly about wasteful bureaucracy. Is there any? Probably. We live in the age of galloping technology, But what counts is what are they doing about it. Nothing much, it would seem, but the spotlight is on Rauner at the moment, since he claims it’s a problem and he has been in office nearly 2 years.– Cassandra- excellent point! But the waste I’ve personally known about as an insider is the use of consulting firms like McKenzie, etc for small projects that could be done in house, for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s a total waste. Then they have the gaul to come back with a crappy slipshod result! They laud it like it’s manna from heaven but for Gods sake (and I’m poking fun at ourselves in Government) if we wanted crappy work we, the government, could do that for far cheaper. The problem is government is extremely complex. Private industry is actually not set up for that. Thus consulting firms doing work for our agencies end up costing the tax payer A LOT more money. We need to be developing our in house capacity and ensuring that we are working smarter and leaner. Some agencies are doing this IDOR, for example, has made great strides to become leaner and more efficient like the private sector. Yet the Rauner administration impulse is to “farm it out” to outside private sources who charge an arm and a leg to fulfill the same function that government could have had we only utilized our people that WE ALREADY HAVE. We have some fabulous dedicated TREMENDOUSLY qualified people. Let’s “shop from home” as we say in my house. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.