Biz Coach Terry Corbell
“The 2010 legislative session is a financial debacle – continued spending, boundless chicanery in violating transparency standards, unsatisfactory performance audits, mismanagement and stifling taxes,” Mr. Corbell writes. “Nothing has been accomplished that will strengthen the state’s economy or create jobs. In fact, it can be easily concluded that the 2010 legislative session has resulted in a sharp decline of voters’ economic and political freedoms.”
His column, http://www.bizcoachinfo.com/
• Gov. Gregoire signed into law the bill that “temporarily”
• A state senator introduced an income tax bill, which has been repeatedly rejected by voters.
• A ghost tax bill was introduced – no text – it was blank.
• The Senate wants to raise $918 million with a sales tax increase of three-tenths of a cent to 6.8 percent.
• The Senate Majority Leader wants to put an unconstitutional income-tax proposal on the fall ballot and would reduce the proposed new sales tax by one cent. But it would put an income tax of 4.5 percent on many job-creators – individuals earning $200,000; heads of households making $300,000; married couples would face a new tax if they earn $400,000.
• A bill would impose a sales tax on out-of-state businesses and consumers who buy Washington products would devastate many business sectors, and would ill-advisedly reduce revenue from lost business and occupation taxes.
But the management consultant says the legislature fails to consider many efficiencies:
• State pensions are 74 percent per employee higher than private sector retirement plans.
• He points out the state personnel office's online explanation of the benefits boasts about superior benefits. Employee bonuses totaling at least seven figures in the aggregate were paid last year -- in a recession while nearly 200,000 private sector jobs have been lost.
• The legislature is behind in funding $7.9 billion in retiree health benefits, which are much higher than the private sector.
• Washington state government agencies employ too many managers and workers. The state employs 100 more workers per 100,000 residents than California. And managers do earn higher pay than their private sector counterparts.
• Agencies regularly fail to get positive performance audits by the State Auditor.
• As a management consultant at two agencies, he says he has encountered numerous incidents of poor performance and refusal to conform to best-practices management. Employees were not even reprimanded for playing hooky from training classes. Managers were impotent in terminating unproductive workers.
• He contends the state has no business being in the printer and liquor businesses – they are not worthy core services. Furthermore, virtually no state agency has complied with outsourcing projects.
• The public employee union members use their lucrative pay to contribute heavily to lawmakers’ campaigns to insure continuity of their tenures, pay and benefit packages.
As The New York Times referred to him in "Been There... Done That... Here's How," Terry Corbell has more than 30 years experience as a finance profit professional and business-performance consultant.
At CMS Associates LLC, he has provided confidential full-service business solutions for Northwest companies ranging from technology to professional service firms, and for the public sector since 1992.
Especially timely in this economic downturn, he provides a nine-point financial turnaround program, on a pay-for-performance basis, for a small retainer and just one percent of the net-profit increase.
Connect: http://www.linkedin.com/
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Biz Coach Terry Corbell is a business-performance consultant and profit professional. As a longtime media columnist, he publishes performance-
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
