Gov. Eric Greitens boasted during his State of the State speech last week that his administration cut 30 cars and four aircraft from its fleet.
We support the cost-saving action, although, in the scheme of things, it amounts to a drop in the bucket.
With the most recent cuts in planes/automobiles, the savings add up to approximately $1.5 million, at most, depending on how you count. Meanwhile, the overall state budget is more than $27 billion (the state has more than 10,000 vehicles).
It's like patting yourself on the back for your walk to take the empty pizza carton to the trash can after polishing off that 3,840-calorie meat-lover's pie by yourself.
While it doesn't exactly live up to the governor's pre-election promise to slash the state's "big, bloated bureaucracy," it's still a savings for taxpayers.
For the record, we don't believe Missouri's government is bloated overall. Former Gov. Jay Nixon repeatedly trimmed the state workforce, cutting thousands of jobs. The Missouri Department of Transportation, in recent years, has also made deep cuts in an effort to "right size" the agency.
Still, there will always be ways to find cost-savings for taxpayers, and we encourage the governor and lawmakers to continue looking.
Greitens made one such find last year when he saw the large number of vacancies on the state's 200-plus boards and commissions.
Last year, the governor formed a task force to study the issue, and it came back with a report recommending the elimination of almost 450 positions.
In his State of the State speech, Greitens called on lawmakers to enact the cuts through state law.
"We pay attention to dollars and we pay attention to cents because we remember: Every single dollar this government spends was earned by the hard work of a Missourian," Greitens said.
We agree.
We support citizen participation in government, but many of the boards are no longer needed and some duplicate others.
Many of those positions were left vacant for Nixon. Some of the boards had not met for years either because they didn't have work to do, or they couldn't get a quorum.
Anyone who believes any of the positions are wrongly being cut will have another chance during the legislative session to defend them. Barring any good arguments against the cuts, we support them.