Why Should Delaware Care?
On the campaign trail, Gov. Matt Meyer promised to remake state government and improve its efficiency, which could save taxpayers money in the long run. A review of services in other states have produced savings as high as 5% of state operating budgets.
In only his second day in office, Gov. Matt Meyer began his efforts to pare back redundant government services and set a standard for ethics across state departments and agencies.
Executive Order 2, which Meyer signed on Wednesday, orders the development of a statewide policy for ethics training for state employees. A draft of the plan must be delivered by April 1.
Right now, ethics training standards are left to individual state department’s policies and may differ in some aspects.
The directive comes after a year of ethics issues ranging from an embezzlement scandal in the Division of Unemployment Insurance to the arrest of the director of the Office of Budget and Management on shoplifting charges.
“Delawareans should trust that their state government is working for them, and that’s why transparency and accountability is at the heart of everything we do for you,” Meyer said in a statement. “This executive order is the first step in delivering an ethical government you can believe in.”
The executive order also begins an expected full-scale review of state services and programs, fulfilling a promise that Meyer made on the campaign trail.
It dictates that the Office of Management and Budget and Department of Finance begin a performance review of all services under the executive branch to seek our inefficiencies, redundancies and areas of non-compliance to state regulations.
Each state agency is ordered to conduct an internal review and complete a report identifying areas where improvements can be made within 90 days. Those reports are to includes review of all audit findings from the past four years.
Finally, the director of boards and commissions is directed to work with the Department of Human Resources, all executive branch agencies and the legislature to identify boards, commissions, task forces, working groups, and other similar entities “that are engaged in redundant work, that have failed to meet in one year or more, or otherwise should be subject for review.”
Delaware has more than 300 such boards, spanning from influential bodies like those that oversee public grants to technical review and licensing boards. Others were established to study issues of a moment, but may no longer be necessary.
That task typically falls to the Joint Legislative Oversight and Sunset Committee, a group of state legislators who review the operations of state boards to make improvements or potentially terminate their mandate. That board of 10 lawmakers only meets periodically, however, and has only terminated two boards in its 44-year history.
In Meyer’s campaign plan, he noted that such efficiency reviews in other states have produced ongoing savings as high as 5% of state operations — which, in Delaware, would equate to $300 million a year.
At Spotlight Delaware’s Legislative Summit earlier this month, Senate President Pro Tem David Sokola said that he was hopeful that that such a review would identify savings in Delaware – the state government is by far the largest employer in Delaware with more than 30,000 employees.
“I think that’s an ambitious amount, but I’m hopeful that we can get 5% from efficiencies. That would be great and that would make some of these other needs that we’re doing a little more easy [to address],” he said. “I know Matt did a pretty good job doing the finances in New Castle County, and I’m cautiously optimistic that he’s going to be able to bring some of those successes to state government.”
Another piece of Meyer’s transparency platform – the creation of an independent Inspector General’s office – has also been introduced in the General Assembly and is expected to begin hearings in March.
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