MARKELL BUCKS TRENDS
Treasurer needs 13 percent less
Delaware State News
By D.L. Bonar
March 11, 1999
While departments throughout the state of Delaware are asking for increases in spending for the next fiscal year, the newly elected treasurer has become somewhat of an oddity.
State Treasurer Jack A. Markell has asked the Legislative Joint Finance Committee for a budget that is 13 percent smaller than what was spent the past year.
"As the office responsible for managing the state's money, we believe it is important to demonstrate our own management efficiencies, " Mr. Markell said. "We believe we can do more with less. "
Gov. Thomas R. Carper recommended a budget of $28.9 million for the treasurer.
As part of his reductions, Mr. Markell is transferring four of his employees to the State Personnel Office for a savings of $161,000, eliminating $175,000 earmarked for an unnecessary contract to monitor the state's money managers and dropping $50,000 in spending on a contingency line of insurance for state employees that has not been used in five years.
The first-term treasurer said efforts are underway to ensure that his office is Y2K-compliant and is in the process of evaluating and rewriting computer programs that are not in compliance.
"These improvements should require no major additional budget authorizations but if left uncorrected could have resulted in significant problems for the state, " Mr. Markell said. "We can't say we will have no Y2K issues, but we have made significant progress in the past eight weeks. "
Mr. Markell said he discovered it can take up to three months to reconcile the accounts of the state. Since taking over, he said, he found many functions that take significant amounts of time and are highly paper-intensive. Debt accounting, for example, is done in a manual ledger.
"On the eve of the 21st Century, finance operations for enterprises $2 billion budgets, whether corporate or governmental, should be done with less paper and more automation, " Mr. Markell said. "Current paper practices are risky in that they take too long and invite calculation errors. We don't yet know the budget impact of any potential changes, but are cognizant that technological innovations should save money as well as provide increased reliability and security. "
Besides managing and overseeing $1.2 billion in investments of state funds, the treasurer's office services$765 million in state debt; administer the $160 million deferred compensation program for state workers and manages the $16 million Delaware Local Government Investment Pool.
Mr. Markell, a Democrat, was elected in November after a well-financed and politically calculated campaign against former Treasurer Janet Rzewnicki, a Republican.
Ms. Rzewnicki lost popularity after a failed attempt two years ago to defeat Gov. Carper in an election riddled with rumors and innuendo about allegations of marital abuse.
