From Stark
State Rep. Mark Miloscia, D-30th, sounds all fired up about the chance to use the State Auditor’s office to make both state and local governments more efficient.
I had a chance to chat with Miloscia over coffee on Monday. His campaign to succeed Brian Sonntag as State Auditor has reported $25,000 in campaign contributions.
(The other candidate reporting is State Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-49th. His campaign reports raising $13,570 so far.)
Miloscia is a U.S. Air Force veteran who piloted a B-52 and was later assigned to Boeing as a contract manager for the B-1 bomber. There, he says he learned the importance of sound financial management and the audits that insure that.
“Since then, that’s been my passion in life,” Miloscia said.
Based on our chat, “passion” is not an overstatement in Miloscia’s case. He talked at a breathtaking pace about his ideas for a more aggressive approach to the auditor’s role.
Incumbent Sontagg has managed to get high marks from both political parties for his own performance. Among other things, the office has moved into performance audits during Sontagg’s tenure. But Miloscia wants to go well beyond continuing Sontagg’s work.
As he sees it, the auditor should take a proactive role on overseeing both financial practices and overall management of state and local government. He believes that this approach could have avoided some financial fiascoes, such as the $255 million State Data Center and the Greater Wenatchee Public Facilities District bond debacle. There were skeptics aplenty on both projects before key decisions were made, Miloscia contends, and they should have been able to call on the State Auditor for an analysis that could have enabled state and local officials to make better decisions.
During his 14 years in the Legislature, Miloscia said he has been an enthusiastic advocate for more thorough auditing of management of state and local governments.
Among other things, he wants audits to be completed more quickly, to give elected officials and agency managers more current information that they can use to streamline their operations and save taxpayer dollars.
There’s a danger that state and local governments will cut employee training budgets during the economic downturn, Miloscia said. As he sees it, that will make government less efficient and more expensive.
He advocates an aggressive approach to upgrade management systems, such as the oversight of private contractors. He contends that the private sector is years ahead of government in its development of techniques for managing its contractors.
“If you improve your contract management system, you can save 10, 15 percent of your budget,” he said. “Particularly at the state level, half of your spending is contracted out.”
Miloscia wants to survey state agency offices and local governments and find out which ones are doing the best at delivering services at lower cost. Then he wants to encourage other agencies and governments to copy their successful methods.
“The state auditor’s office can be the vehicle to spread best practices across the state,” he said.
“Based on our chat, “passion” is not an overstatement in Miloscia’s case. He talked at a breathtaking pace about his ideas for a more aggressive approach to the auditor’s role.”
Breathtaking is probably an understatement. I want to tape him when I hear him so that I can slow it down 50% and give it another go later.
Having received copies of Ferndale’s last two annual audits, I am not impressed with Brian Sonntag. I suspect there will be more problems like “the Greater Wenatchee Public Facilities District debacle.” If Miloscia could rein in the fiscal irresponsibility in Ferndale and other Washington cities, I would be supportive. However, just making the rubber stamp from the State Auditor’s office move faster is not a solution.
Feel free to email Mark at Mark@MarkMiloscia.com and ask him that question. Thanks Walter!
Seems like the Auditor’s job is to examine the public record of the past
and decide where the taxpayer has been misled or not
and then to inform all in a suggestive and not directive way.
Definitely not to plot public policy on the basis of their own ideals.
Openness of government is another task charged to that guy,
so how open are we gonna be when the office’s own activity is too intimately involved to be candid?
So, I heard on the radio early this a.m. about the Occupy protest at the Whatcom County Council meeting; sheriff’s deputies being called, etc. Not even a blurb about it in the Herald yet today? I’m sure you guys do your best with the skeleton staff you have, but really, this is a sad day for political reporting by the Herald. There used to be a reporter at all the county and city council meetings. Did that practice go out the door with Sam Taylor?
We did have a reporter at the meeting. His initial reaction was not to give the protest attention–we in the press are sometimes accused of being too easily manipulated in that manner, and he had other matters to write about. But on Wednesday, after reporters and editors discussed it, we decided to do a followup story that was published today.