There’s a reason why babies cry… it works:
State Auditor Brian Sonntag won a scarce commodity today – more money for his budget.
Gov. Chris Gregoire and Sonntag reached a deal that’s expected to give Sonntag an additional $14 million for performance audits, giving him around $26 million to spend on the program over the next two years.
Tim Eyman and the editorial boards went ape-shit when Sonntag’s office was asked to absorb the same sort of cuts everybody else was enduring, and so of course the Governor caved. But even worse was the related veto…
The budget contained a provision that would have allowed Sonntag to recoup some of the money if he could prove his audits actually save the state money. Performance audits are aimed at finding efficiencies in state and local governments. Sonntag blasted the Legislature, saying the move would make him a bounty hunter.
“What a dumb idea and a stupid way to manage,” he said recently.
Get that? The guy who argues that performance audits are so important that he’d rather deny kids health care and education than scale back his office for a couple years, thinks it is “dumb” to audit his own audits. Let’s hear it for accountability.