We’ve been hearing about how state government under “Squishy” Perdue has just been cutting and cutting and that things are just so lean, gosh darn it, it’s getting hard to find more to cut.
Don’t buy that line for a minute.
One need look no further than the Office of Environmental Management at the Georgia Department of Community Affairs and its insipid “I don’t recycle” campaign to find $500,000.00 of your tax dollars being spent on a useless campaign that proudly features an attempt to use “reverse psychology” on the public.
This campaign is an effort to make you recycle more. And this, we are meant to believe, is an appropriate purpose for government and the taxpayers money? Really?
Last week, [the] Office of Environmental Management at the Georgia Department of Community Affairs launched its “I don’t recycle” campaign. The reverse-psychology effort is meant to tweak interest among 24- to 35-year-olds, the demographic among which it’s easiest to change recycling habits.
The campaign’s tongue-in-cheek Web site, www.YouGottaBeKidding.org, highlights fictitious Georgians and their excuses for not recycling. Savannahian Ronald T.W. King, for example, refuses to make the effort because “mine would just be a drop in the ocean.”
Again, this is “critical” spending that Georgia can’t go without?
About 45 percent of Georgians don’t recycle, Hartmann said. Focus groups revealed that 24- to 35-year-old non-recyclers weren’t really opposed to the practice; they were mainly apathetic.
“They had a bunch of excuses, all of which were lame,” he said. ” ‘Oh, I’m too busy. It takes too much work.’ One of the things about non-recyclers is that they don’t think individuals can make a difference.”
The $500,000 campaign is meant to convince them otherwise, using the power of social marketing and humor.
“Recycling is serious business, serious for the state, but you have to have fun doing it, especially for this demographic,” Hartmann said.
The campaign officially kicks off in Savannah, one of its hub cities, today. But there’s already an electronic billboard on DeRenne Avenue getting attention, with callers questioning if it’s for real, said city spokesman Bret Bell.
“They think some imposter has put it up there and slapped our logo on it,” he said. “That’s what the campaign is supposed to do: get them questioning and drive them to the Web site.”
Be sure to visit www.YouGottaBeKidding.org and revel in all the internet goodness that your money is helping to pay for.
Why have extra lab technicians working for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab when we instead can have state employees perfecting “reverse psychology” on citizens?
Isn’t it more important to use money to encourage recycling with slick t-shirts and websites than have money for more Georgia State Patrol troopers on the roadways keeping people safe?
This is just one program. One program in one department of one agency. And its cost is half a million dollars.
Still think there isn’t any fat to cut from the budget? Think again.
And while you are pondering that, consider if Georgia would still be able to function without an Office of Environmental Management at the Georgia Department of Community Affairs at all. Somehow I suspect our lives would go on and the sun would rise in the morning.
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Get the State out of the retirement business and let individuals make their own retirement decisions and you cut more than $7 BILLION…
Jeff, then our potential savings are now at $7,000,500,000.00!
It’s so easy even a RINO Governor can do it!
Anyone who has ever had any close dealings with a department of state government can see a myriad of places where serious cuts could be made.
My pet peeve is the equine program at the Dept of Agriculture. I can hear the screams, now, from the horse lovers (and I am a horse owner of a pasture ornament, very well cared for), but this is NOT something the taxpayers should be financing. It should be left up to the rescue groups. It requires lots of personnel, who travel all over the state in state vehicles, plus at least one (maybe more now) impound facility and all the associated costs, i.e., tractors, horse trailers, etc. This is one of those things that was a nice idea when we were flush with money, but it should be closed down now.
This has been bugging me ever since the peanut uprising and all the talk about increasing the Dept of Ag budget to deal with this…
There was a peanut uprising? Do we need to call Col. Sheppie back from the border war to quell this?
I would complain to my elected representatives, but I’m too busy. It takes too much work. And besides, I don’t think individuals can make a difference.
Don’t forget the Georgia Council of the Arts. Even after all the funding it receives from our General Assembly, President Obama was nice enough to include 343,000 for the Georgia Council of the Arts in the American Investment and whatever act.
I know facts are never appreciated here, but I think its worthy to note that the Governor and Legislature did eliminate the funding for the program in the current budget and that office is using previous year’s funds to manage this campaign.
As long as it’s being funded with previous year’s funds and not real tax dollars I’m fine with it.
LA Times has a nice interactive budget balancer which gives insight in what might be useful even in Georgia:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-statebudget-fl,0,95571.htmlstory
By the way California has 136 state workers per 10,0000
Georgia has 171 per 10,0000.
Alabama, SC, and NC all have more than 225 State employees per 10,000
http://sourcebook.governing.com/subtopicresults.jsp?yr=34&ind=681&cha=&sort=a&mrtype=&ctype=3&print=1
Some Departments have so many employees with so much sick, and vacation time booked that if you fired them you would still have to pay their entire years worth of salary. So much for cutting Senior workers to save money.
I would early release half our inmates on the condition that they immediately leave the State with a free plane ticket to California and cannot return for 4 years. Because California is planning the same budget cutting measure!
Technocrat:
Legalize. Drops prison population pretty signficantly AND allows law enforcement to concentrate on actual crimes.
Chris, great response! Really added some much needed information to the discussion.
Donna, you’re welcome
Techno, Can’t do it. We have a banishment prohibition in the state constitution. I’m pretty sure some activist judge will say it applies to voluntary release and banishment too.
Having previously worked for the Department of Community Affairs, this program is only the tip of the iceberg for the department that’s has part of it’s mission as writing checks to local governments for “downtown development” projects.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a website where the entire state budget was viewable (even downloadable as a spreadsheet) where one could see the line item budget, by state agency? Agency name, specific department within the agency, how much, what it is for, email address and/or website URL for more detailed info, etc.
Imagine the conservatives and libertarians who would spend many hours pouring through the list, line by line, sending emails to get more info, and coming up with real budget cuts.
I don’t see Democrats or Rockefeller Republican’ts in Georgia government ever coming within 5,000 miles of doing that.
You know the data exists, and could be compiled annually with the budget. So what if it is a 50,000 row spreadsheet (or more)? Heck, I’ll take few thousand rows for review. If they can make the records for all 16,000+ registered sex offenders online for download as a spreadsheet, surely they can do so with the budget. Frankly, I and everyone I know are in far more danger from the state budget than from sex offenders.
Well, you can see what everyone made last year, and eventually you will be able to see what everyone made this year. It will be very interesting to see which agency heads made more money in 2009 than they did in 2008 despite the current budget situation. And to see which agency heads resorted to layoffs in order to avoid a loss of income to themselves, etc.
I don’t know why the guilty ones (and you know who you are) never saw that one coming.
It isn’t the Agency heads, as much as it is the top 2-15 WORKERS who must be paid a comparable wage to business to retain them. The 2nd and 3rd in command who actually do the work of government.
Why does the Govenor’s Office need 656 employees. ~~ 35 of which make > $100,000 per year plus expenses………….to help HIM FISH!
In Teachers Retirement System has 220 emplyees….. Why does
BOEDY,NANCIE H -CO-CHIEF INVESTMENT make $427,480.08
CARY,CHARLES W -CHIEF INVESTMENT OFF $427,480.08
HORKAN,THOMAS A -DIRECTOR OF EQUITIES $335,733.34
It is very interesting to look at MINOR STATE salaries in obscure places.
There are many almost secret pools of excess compensation and duplication.
But the agency heads are the decision-makers. The lieutenants aren’t the ones who get to decide whether they’re furloughed or not.
How the OX runs Fire Safety and Insurance with only 3 people paid slightly above $100k amazes me. There must be some mighty dedicated and underpaid workers there………………….compared to other agencies.
Take a look at how little some of those people make, same in many other agency where Commisioners are elected vs appointed by Governor.
I can assure you most Agency Heads cannot run their Agency without their executives they would be lost. Getting appointed by a Governor has little to do with excellant ultra competence, just good enough for State Government is the minimal requirement. Politics and contributions [thru straws] are mostly what counts…………..once you are in you keep your nose clean, payup, and don’t rock boats.
Hire an independent firm to evaluate all AGENCY HEADS for competence vs salary paid.
o make things easy start with those paid over $100,000. The 500 highest paid.
MS:
http://www.open.georgia.gov/
Thank me later.
Alternatively, one could, with a phone call or two, obtain an actual copy of the budget too.
$500,000 would build a couple of boat ramps…
Thank god, Georgia didn’t get suckered into too many automobile plants like Tenn. Now Tenn is refusing to pay GM $200 Million CASH DEMAND to keep 2,900 UNION jobs at SpringHill…………..that’s only $68,000 per job*.
The thinking is GM may not survive even after bankruptcy for long due to low profitablility of small cars mandated by government, so why gamble $200 M on an iffy future. Plus Tenn doesn’t have the money to spare in current conditions.
* States are use to tax abatements, free land, roads, utilities not paying cash up front for jobs. A new paradigm!……………just like a bribe.
Pretty sucky when at best employees pay 15% in combined taxes, so it would take 7 -10years to recover the $68, 000 per.
Dash–”I would complain to my elected representatives, but I’m too busy. It takes too much work. And besides, I don’t think individuals can make a difference.”
Although sarcastic Dash, many of us (local elected officials) feel that our representatives DON’T listen to us. They are weakening gov’t at the local level and some have even spoke out against us from the well, but we are at their mercy as long as they keep getting re-elected.
“Well, you can see what everyone made last year,…”
Doesn’t matter. That was paid out of last year’s funds.
But Icarus, the fact that ” the Governor and Legislature did eliminate the funding for the program in the current budget” has not been addressed, no update in the original post, no correction, just another post which will mislead readers who don’t enjoy the cacophony of a comment thread is interesting.
Then again there are many things (like editorial processes) which interest me and simply bore others.
I wrote a story about state and local dollars to bring curbside recycling to Savannah. Our old friend “Bull Moose” campaigned to bring this curbside service to the city.
http://savannahchannel.com/go/bbs/board.php?bo_table=savannah_news&wr_id=620
The state’s contribution to get this started was over $3 million and the annual operating costs were expected to about $1.3 million. We have a bunch of poor poverty people in Savannah if you were not already aware.
According to my estimate of the program instead of the new costs to the tax payers of less than $1million per year after six months it is on a path to cost about $1.2 million. To make the original estimated budget by the city to work citizens will have to increase their recycling by 650%. Yes, they have to buy more crap and make sure their crap goes into the state funded recycling containers.
Playing with trash is fun.
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