Steinberg, Bass take another crack at rooting out wasted state dollars

What a waste of time & energy. What this amounts to is studying California's budget problems to death. Everyone knows what the problem is-Californians want all the services that the State government currently provides & want to pay for these services with a beer pocket book budget when they know these services require a champagne pocket book budget. I guarantee every Californian that this new study will go the way of Gov. Schwarzenegger's Ca. Performance Review-the report will just sit on his desk collecting dust because every one of the 150 agencies & departments represents a program that some constituency of Californians want or need. REMEMBER, A PROGRAM THAT BENEFITS ONE GROUP OF CALIFORNIANS IS AN UNNECESSARY WASTE & NOT NECESSARY TO ANOTHER GROUP OF CALIFORNIANS. I use to work for the Ca. Occupational Safety & Health division of the Department of Industrial Relations. Gov. Pete Wilson dismantled it because he said it was a waste of taxpayer money when we already had the Federal government's Occupational Safety & Health. On the day Cal/OSHA was dismantled, the workers' compensation cost to employers increased 45% (to this day Gov. Schwarzenegger won't admit this is the reason employers have high workers' compensation cost). Employers screamed bloody murder. The employers & Californians found out that Fed/OSHA is inefficient, incompetent & ineffective (successive Presidents reduced funding, therefore Fed/OSHA doesn't have enough staff to regulate employers in states without their own OSHA programs). 18 months later, Cal/OSHA was reconstituted. In otherwords, people don't know what they lost until it's gone. Be careful what you wish for, we might just get it & we'll be worse off for it. Californians need to realize that any programs the State cuts will be regulated by the Federal government & the Federal government's reputation is BETTER DEAD THAN FED.