The governor's push to turn over more government functions to private businesses is harder to quantify. State Comptroller Robert Milligan supports a review of all state operations to make them more efficient. But he said it's easy to fudge the numbers to justify privatizing state functions. People work hard to create analyses that look good.'' Some private companies that have taken over various functions of state government, meanwhile, have achieved poor to mixed results. But more than one-third of those the companies seized came from insured drivers.
Few lawmakers debate whether to privatize government functions anymore.
And even the harshest critics of Bush agree on the need to trim some jobs from the public payroll. It does matter to those in the cross hairs. Ray Henley, a vocational instructor in the laundry services department at Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee is one of them. A Vietnam veteran who has spent 36 years working for the state, Henley is only a little more than two years away from retirement. While state workers fret over job security, state business leaders knit their brows over whether the state could still do more.