Reduction in number of state employees is a number Jindal should tout

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A good portion of the decline in employee count has been made up by a major increase in contract labor...many that blur the contractor:employee relationship. I know I am unable to use contractors with the same conditions the state seems to get away with (provide office space, vehicles, set hours, tasks, etc). I have been waiting for someone to look at that more closely. Strange how headcount can be reduced in some agencies but the budgets don't mirror the reductions.

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These things are true. However the obvious reason is the state has not reduced the spending it does or services it provides. What it has reduced is the future cost the 30,000 would have cost us in the future. Those cost are not in the current budget. A contract employee does not carry the future cost that a state employee does.

I think the state should cut out some of the services they provide all together but if they are not I would rather contract services. The problem to be careful with contract services is contracting monopoly like services--things like prisons. It is the sole responsibility of government and as such is sort of a monopoly. To contract those services, being so lucrative, would open the door to corruption.

Health care services should have never been actually performed by the state. There are lots of providers. If the state wishes to provide welfare health care they should just pay private providers to do it. The charity system was quite unique in Louisiana and was really an inefficient way to provide healthcare. It was limited in availability and services.

Headcounts haven't changed just the way the heads are counted. Instead of hiring permanent classified employees, 4 year appointments are being used....and they don't count against the civil service numbers.