Cutting 90% of government is easier than you think

I provide a real-life example for the benefit of the incoming Minnesota legislature. Perhaps we won’t see a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)-style effort here at the state level any time soon. But a boy can dream.

You may be aware that I spent a few years running the Energy Division of the state Department of Commerce under the last Republican governor. For laughs, I tracked down the most recent budget enacted to fund the agency.

The budget covers a two-year period and was included in HF 2310, passed in May 2023. It was one of those omnibus bills, running to 431 pages. It covers all the state agencies touching the fields of energy and the environment

The budget for Commerce’s Energy Division totals almost $100 million for the first year of the budget cycle.

Curiously, the cost to run the Division and pay for the bureaucrats it employs totals out at less than $6 million. So where is the rest of the money, more than $90 million, going?

Pet projects is the short answer. One of the largest single items is $15 million for the “solar in schools” grant program. Another $5 million went toward an electric vehicle rebate program. $3 million goes for a “residential electric panel upgrade grant program.”

$6 million was set aside for an electric school bus grant program. In total, there are exactly 26 earmarked appropriations under this one agency, one for each letter of the alphabet.

So, more than $90 million, more than 90 percent of the total, could easily be cut from the agency’s budget, without eliminating a single bureaucrat or impacting the agency’s customer service in any way.

HF 2310 continues in this vein, agency after agency. There are earmarks under other agencies that provide millions of dollars (even tens of millions) earmarked for individual nonprofits, listed by name.

If the now-divided Minnesota legislature is looking for bipartisan consensus, a bare-bones, keep-the-lights-on two-year budget would be in order. Not funding frivolous grant programs and unaccountable nonprofits would fit the mood of the times.