Schmidt's Meager Management (tm) (c)2009

As of today I am copyrighting and trade marking the term Meager Management (c) (TM) 2009.

The term will be used to refer to a new and chronic phenomenon in government but also the private sector which is a decline in available revenue. Here is now a New York Times article summarized the dilemma in which Michigan finds itself:

"In all, even before thinking about the coming year’s $1.8 billion shortfall, Michigan’s lawmakers had — through cuts, accounting shifts and tax increases — closed more than $7 billion in budget gaps over the past eight years. While many states have experienced a year of pain or perhaps two during this downturn, Michigan is approaching nearly a decade of budget misery."

This situation more or less lipped by all of us and we were shocked, SHOCKED I SAY, when we discovered what the US auto industry disaster was doing to the State of Michigan. we know that California is worse off (is that possible?!) budget wise with 30 some billion dollars in deficit and no end in sight.

MSNBC had another very troubling piece on state pension funds:

Most state pension funds do not have enough assets to pay for their long-term pension liabilities, although experts say the median level of 85 percent is not low enough to raise alarm bells. Some states, including Illinois and West Virginia, are substantially below that level. Figures are as of June 30, 2004, the most recent date for which complete figures were available.

What! The most recent numbers are for 2004!

What the hey!

Do YOU balance your checkbook only every five years?

These people should be putting out numbers every six months and then they should be adjusting revenue sources, fees, spending, and hiring to match their miserable state of affairs.

If you try to find solid information about local government and school pension funds you hit a brick wall. the data is not much better for county and state governments but we know generally that pension obligations are for the most part in the red and used as cash cows to fund otherwise unaffordable programs. It's basically the same as Social Security only worse.

Let's keep our eye on the pension and below-the-federal-government budgeting and revenue woes ball. Keep an eye out for Schmidt's Meager Management (TM) and (c) 2009 will be up for widespread debate and discussion as well as running some workshops and other hands-on traimning activities.