Tim Skubick

One of the country’s veteran and some would say wise U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart nailed it when he wrote he could not define pornography but “I’ll know it when I see it.” Stop laughing because when it comes to defining “WFA” in the state budget, it really depends on whom is looking at it.

The “WFA” of course is not pornographic but refers to the alleged $5 billion in waste, fraud, and abuse uncovered by House Republicans after “going over the current state budget line by line” and then cutting state programs left and right to produce those savings for Michigan taxpayers.

But the harsh reality is, it depends upon who is deciding what WFA looks like. One person’s waste is another person’s valid state service.

For example, if you run the state corrections department, you know that for every inmate who enters the system, state taxpayers get hit with at least a $3,000 bill for every crook for each year they are in the slammer. So the goal is to make sure when the crooks return to society, they don’t come back, thus saving taxpayers a bundle.

So when corrections leaders look at a $750,000 higher education program for inmates designed to get them a job when they return to society to stay, there are smiles all over the place.

House R’s frowned at it and declared it waste and inked it out of the budget.

Was it a quick fix waste with a one-time savings or a long-term investment to help inmates turn their lives around to become tax-paying citizens over time, rather than tax-draining prisoners?

Or how about the state agriculture budget that took a 48% slice including the proposed elimination of a $1.6 million food containment monitoring program.

If you have a personal food taster to keep you from getting sick or even kicking the bucket over tainted food, this GOP cut doesn’t bother you one iota and obviously House waste-finders agree.

Ya gotta wonder, however, if any of those budget hawks sat around the table when this item was up for debate and recalled the worst food contamination disaster in Michigan history where a poison food agency might have averted it.

Can you say PBB?

The fire retardant was accidentally mixed up with cattle feed and it wasn’t long before they were burying in Kalkaska and Mio hundreds of dead animals that ate the stuff.

Oh yeah. One other thing. Before those animals died, some of that meat was consumed by … you guessed it, human beings. And when the research came back, 90% of the state population consumed PBB. Some got sick. Some babies consumed PBB-laced breast milk. Others dodged the bullet.

So the removal of a food containment monitoring program? A waste or a program that might actually keep Michiganders safe?

This is not to say that the R’s found stuff that does look and smell like WFA.

There are so-called phantom state employees. If the Republicans are right, here’s how it works.

In previous budgets, Department Y requested X number of new employees. Lawmakers would approve the dollars but instead of hiring the workers, House GOP Speaker Matt Hall asserts, they “squirreled” the money away into this fund or that, and no one was the wiser. The speaker contends there are about 4,300 “ghost” civil servants in the system wasting your tax dollars. So far, the Whitmer administration has not offered its take on this allegation, but if true, let’s just say it doesn’t look good.

At this read, the governor and key legislators at least have everyone’s initial suggestion on how much of your tax money should be spent and where. The two sides are about $5 billion apart in writing a new budget. If they want to they can work this out, as the Beatles used to sing, or they can continue to harp at each other for being irresponsible which makes for nice headlines but not so much if you want to keep the government afloat past the budget deadline of October 1.

Too bad Justice Stewart is not available to help on the “waste” segment of this debate to determine what is legit or not.