Worth a try?

(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers Aug. 5, 2013)

Martin HawverThere’s a request to the Kansas Legislative Coordinating Council—the business side of running the Legislature—for a much talked-about but never tried study of state government.

It’s called zero-based budgeting, and it has not been sought on a reasonable scale before.

What’s that? It is virtually dismantling for budget purposes a state agency and seeing what the agency is charged to do by state law, and what it spends to do it.

This year, Senate Ways and Means Chair Ty Masterson, R-Andover, says he’d like to zero-base budget an agency or two, not the whole state, just an agency or two to see whether the agency is doing what it is supposed to do, and whether it is doing it in the most cost-efficient manner..