Streamlining only just begun

The 2010 session of the Iowa Legislature will be remembered for its brevity - shortest since 1972 - and a serious stab at streamlining state government.

In the end, however, legislators mostly bought a little more time to get the state's fiscal house in order. The general fund budget was balanced with $700 million in one-time sources. Which means the state faces a budget gap for next fiscal year potentially similar to the gaping hole that greeted legislators in January when they began work on the budget year that begins in July.

So we wonder: Did legislators simply postpone the worst pain?

Certainly, they faced their most formidable task in decades. Revenues, in the midst of national recession, were down a half-billion dollars from the previous fiscal year. Overspending in the previous two sessions contributed to the challenge.

Following Gov. Culver's 10-percent across-the-board budget cut and his executive order that mandated 39 cost-saving ideas, legislators also wielded financial knives. They OK'd a reorganization bill that eliminated 14 boards or commissions and included efficiency measures such as consolidating information technology and state purchasing practices.

Combined with an early retirement package offered to some state employees, all those actions are projected to bring savings of at least $250 million. We'll see.

Leaders of the Democratic majority bragged Tuesday that they did the responsible thing by maintaining commitments to education, health care and public safety by using federal stimulus, state reserves and other one-time funding sources to prevent critical layoffs. Yet many school districts are still making big cuts in staff and looking at major local property tax increases.

And even if all those savings measures the legislators approved pan out, they won't be enough to avoid much the same situation next year unless there's a big rebound in tax revenues. Then what? With the federal government's massive debts, don't look for more stimulus money.

Bottom line, we don't think reorganization went far enough this session.

Rep. Mary Mascher, D-Iowa City, who led reorganization efforts in the House, said in early March that she expects to find more savings in coming years. A comprehensive evaluation of business tax credits' effectiveness vs. the drain on state coffers may provide one answer, but there must be others.

Realistically, streamlining has only just begun. Iowa needs a focused, ongoing effort to sustain what we see as the state's policy priorities: stirring job creation and economic development that also revive tax revenues, carving out a more efficient educational bureaucracy, maintaining adequate public safety and filling gaps in health care for Iowa's neediest.