Wake up, Ohio, and let's save some freakin' money

Marc Kilmer from the Buckeye Institute has a better answer than Uncle Ted Strickland seems to have to the budget problems of our Buckeye State. Here's Kilmer's first "for instance":

For instance, state employee salaries have risen faster than salaries for other Ohio workers. From 2001 to 2007, Ohioans' per capita income rose 21%. State employee income, however, rose 27%. If state employees' income would have risen at the rate of the rest of Ohioans, the state government would have spent $413 million less this year. And if the number of state employees remained at its 2001 level, the state would have spent $648 million less this year.

Here's his second:

Take state employee health insurance, for instance. Government workers receive good health insurance coverage and they only pay an average of 15% of their premiums. In the private sector, employees pay closer to 30% of their premiums. If state employees were more like private sector employees, that would save taxpayers around $150 million this year.

So his advice isn't to slash government jobs, which is next to impossible anyway, but merely to bring their compensation more in line with comparable positions in the private sector. Conclusion:

Government employees should certainly be compensated for their services. But there is no reason why they should have better pay and benefits than they would receive in the private sector. When there is such a large gap between the state government's spending and revenue, state policymakers need to review the generous compensation and benefits received by state employees and look for ways to rein it in. A hiring freeze, reducing the rate of salary increases, and paring back benefits to private sector levels are not radical propositions. In fact, it's just common sense.

In this article, Kilmer is going out of his way to be gracious and adulatory toward state and local government employees. But let me just add that it seems to me that these compensation premiums for government jobs for would basically encourage people to aggressively go after these positions which usually constitute patronage fiefdoms. I'm pretty sure that's not an outcome desired by Ohio's taxpayers.