A Refreshing New Attitude
New Gov. Phil Bredesen has set a new fiscal tone in Tennessee when it comes to government spending. He's proposing actual cuts in state government's budget and payroll, and major institutions that in the past lobbied for higher taxes are now agreeing that there is waste to be cut.

Bredesen, who says he plans to reduce the state payroll by 2,900 employees (returning it to the number of state employees on the payroll in 2000), now is asking the state's higher education system to do its part.

Amazingly, higher ed is lining up to comply. I say "amazingly" because, for the last four years, the University of Tennessee system has sent busloads of students to the state capital at taxpayer expense in order to lobby the legislature to pass an income tax.

But now that the governor who championed the income tax is gone, and the new governor is committed to balancing the state budget without raising taxes, UT officials are saying they can, indeed, find ways to cut.

Reports the Tennessean newspaper in Nashville: UT President John W. Shumaker and other officials said they would find ways to work through hard times. ''We exist for our students,'' Shumaker said. He said UT's new executive vice president, Steve Leonard, would lead an effort to find ways to save money. Shumaker mentioned what he called a small but telling example of how money might be saved. After seeing an invoice for items the university had purchased recently for $290, he sent a staff member out in Knoxville to buy the same materials. They cost $54.

Shumaker says UT will continue to raise private funds, and plans a major capital campaign next year. He declared the university a ''no-whine zone,” the paper reports.

Incidentally, Bredesen’s plan to reduce the state payroll by 2,900 employees has people wondering why the previous administration added 2,900 people to the payroll in the midst of what it said was a budget crisis.

2,900 employees is not small change. At an average of just $30,000 per year in salary and benefits, those employees would cost the state $87 million per year. Yet the Sundquist administration hired them in the middle of a “budget crisis.” More evidence the budget crisis of the past four years was at the very least a political exxageration.

(This item is also up at PolState.com today.)