Hollingsworth wants expiration date on all state programs

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The top Republican in the state Senate said Monday he wants California to carve out a permanent place in state government for a chief inspector general who would analyze and audit every state program.

Flanked by two leaders of the anti-tax movement, Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth of Murrieta said his proposal would force every state program, big and small, to expire after 12 years unless specifically renewed by the Legislature.

The idea, Hollingsworth said, is to put some force behind all those dusty audits of government spending that are never acted upon. “The reports cannot just sit on a shelf,” he said, because programs would have to be actively renewed. SB 887 is sponsored by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., said the bill “attempts to break what we call the bureaucratic inertia.” Asked if the proposal would shrink state government, Lew Uhler, president of the National Tax Limitation Committee, said, “I would hope so.”

“Certainly the government needs to be pruned in so many ways,” Uhler added.

Hollingsworth sought to portray the legislation as nonpartisan, naming Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) and Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-La Canada Flintridge) as among the Democrats with whom he has had “preliminary” discussions.

Neither Democrat has endorsed the proposal.

The goal of an inspector general would be to deliver services more efficiently, Hollingsworth said. “Shrinking the size of government, in this case, is non-ideological. It’s (about) efficiency,” he said, predicting “billions of dollars of savings.”

Under the legislation, the inspector general would be appointed by the governor to serve a 12-year term and would have to be confirmed by two-thirds of both houses of the Legislature.

All GOP proposals face an uphill climb in the Democrat-dominated Legislature. So could the proposal become a summer budget bargaining chip – when the Democrats need to lure GOP votes?

Hollingsworth called it a “high priority for me.” Aaron McLear, a Schwarzenegger spokesman, called it “an important issue for the governor.”

-- Shane Goldmacher in Sacramento