Ellsworth American., 1922-11-08
PRUNING STATE COSTS.
Special Legislative Committee Seek
ing Means of Saving.

Special Legislative Committee Seek
ing Means of Saving.
The special legislative committee,
authorized by the last legislature to
make thorough investigation of
State departments with a view to
recommending changes making for
efficiency and economy, is now at
work.
The committee is making progress
in its work, but will probably be un-
able to complete its examination of
all the expenditures of the State be-
fore January first. Certain recon-
mendations have already been de-
cided upon that will result in making
a considerable saving for the State.
Some of these recommendations
are such as to require legislative
action, and these will not be an
it's report to the governor in January.
Others are of such nature as to re-
quire only the approval of the gov
ernor, who can put them into effect
by executive order.
One big leak has been found, due
to the method of handling mail mat
ter sent out from the State house.
The volume of letters and circulars
originating there during the course
of a year has attained surprising
proportions, and the committee was
astonished to find that the total an
nual postal bill for the State in the
State house alone in 1921 was no less
than $34,345.S3.
Inquiry as to methods disclosed
the fact that each department had
been buying it's own stamps, dis
tributing them without an account
ing system, and applying them with
out stamping machines by which a
check might have been maintained
on their use. Also, there was no
guaranty that too much postage
would not be affixed to any piece of
mail of given class, or that second
or third-class matter would not be
mailed as first-class with correspond
ingly higher rates. Further inquiry
ELECTED the information that in one
department, where an accounting
system had been voluntarily adopted,
the expenditures for stamps were cut
down to about one-third what it had
previously been.
The committee has recommended
to the governor that a central mail
ing office for the whole State
house be established. To this Office
is to be sent all the outbound mail
from each department, and here it
will be sorted into the proper classi-
fications, stamped, and transmitted
to the postoffice. This will obviate
the necessity of any department pur-
chasing stamps, and will make it
absolutely certain that there shall be
no loss in handling them.
1t is not expected that the per-
centage of saving will run as high
for the whole account as it was in
the case of the department men
toned, but the committee confidently
believes that 1t will result in cutting
at least $40, 900 from the postage bill
of the State.
The committee has also made
many minor recommendations to
department heads which the latter
have cheerfully put into effect, and
that have resulted in better work at
less cost.
An interesting development of the
committees work was the decision 1t
arrived at after going over the high
way departments receipts and ex-
penditures, to recommend to the next
legislature the passage of an act
placing tax of one cent a gallon on
gasoline, the proceeds, estimated at
approximately 100000, to be used
in part for road maintenance, on the
theory that in this way the man who
uses the highways most will pay the
most toward their upkeep, and plan
that will afford some revenue from
out of State trucks and touring cars
as we'll as from residents of Maine.
The committee recommends that a
large part of the proceeds of this tax
be devoted to the construction of
State-aid roads in rural districts. 1t
believes this tax to be an urgent
necessity, the funds otherwise ayaila-
BILE for maintenance and State-aid
road construction being altogether
inadequate.
In this connection the committee
points out that the State tax in the
last ten years has increased "a per
cent, while that of the counties has
increased Is per cent, and that of
the municipalities 157 per cent.
NJ TT Ial VIY.