Selling state-owned properties, streamlining equipment purchases and outsourcing government services prevailed as some of the leading ideas among a group of New Hampshire business leaders as they spit-balled ideas to curb state spending.

The members of Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s Commission on Government Efficiency, tasked with evaluating state government and making recommendations on how to save money and streamline operations, were more detailed in their reports at their second public meeting on Wednesday.

Those nominated to the panel have said they’re taking a different approach from Elon Musk and the federal Department of Government Efficiency, stressing a desire to work through these issues deliberately and with a fine-toothed comb.

“At the end of the day, it’s cost savings,” former Governor Criag Benson said, “but it’s also effectiveness and efficiency and making sure that people in the state, and the people that work in the state, feel good about their job and feel good about their service and are happy with the things that we can do to make their lives better.”

Ayotte said she’s on the same page.

“This commission, it was set up in the way to look at, how do we improve government and how do we make structural reforms?” Ayotte said while talking with reporters on Wednesday. “I actually said to the commission upfront … ‘I really want you to look in a longer setting of how things are structured, what we can do better, how we can serve people better.’”

Sell state-owned property

Several members of the commission mentioned they’d like to take inventory of state-owned property, determine whether it’s truly needed and if not, sell it as a source of revenue.

Benson, who co-chairs the commission, took interest in that idea and said he’d like to hit two birds with one stone by selling it to developers who would create more workforce housing – a proposal Ayotte made on the campaign trail last year.

“We are having a problem with housing,” Benson said. “I’d like to see some special emphasis put on some of that state-owned land for workforce housing.”

Consolidate equipment

Much like House Speaker Sherman Packard’s suggestion at the first meeting of buying the same kind of firearms that several police departments can use, Benson proposed consolidating state purchases of equipment wherever it’s possible, like the blood-testing equipment used by the Department of Safety and Department of Health and Human Services.

“These are massive machines that we use and they’re expensive to buy, but also all the disposable items that are needed in order to do that cost a fortune,” Benson said. “We don’t consolidate all that stuff to find a better way to do it, and so there’s opportunities in all those things.”

Outsource services

Chris Clement, a former commissioner of the Department of Transportation, said he’s considering a shift toward more outsourced contracts for things like road design and winter maintenance.

Lots of vacant jobs at the DOT, which Clement said has 40% vacancy rates in some areas, mean a “challenge in terms of level of service,” especially for tasks like snowplowing.

“We would never in the past outsource things like highway design or bridge design … but now, because of retirements and vacancy rates, we’re looking at doing more of that,” Clement said. “Moral of the story is, more outsourcing but in a smart way, not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”

Evaluate work-from-home

Andy Crews, a New Hampshire Lottery commissioner who co-chairs the COGE with Benson, said he plans to survey state departments and employees about the effectiveness of working from home. In some high-tech roles, it might be, but he underscored what he sees as the value of in-person work.

“We do know, speaking to the commissioners and the department heads, even with their own agencies, it’s almost like, ‘Who’s first to require their employees to come back to work?’” Crews said. “They’ve lost a little bit of the organization’s culture when you’ve got people working at home and not working together … There’s a lot of efficiencies based on just the water-cooler talk, what projects they’re working on. That would make us more efficient, and that we’ve lost since people have been working from home.”

On a national level, President Donald Trump has taken a stance against working from home and ordered federal employees to return to the office full-time.

Work with other states

Many other states have hopped on the government efficiency train now, and Benson said he’d like to work with people outside of New Hampshire to put together some metrics and best practices so they can measure the work that they’re doing.

“It’d be a way to use what’s going on around the country and a way to help us here in the state be more efficient about the way we do things,” Benson said.

What’s next?

The Commission on Government Efficiency’s next meeting is tentatively scheduled for May 14 at 10 a.m., where Ayotte is expected to join for the first time.

 

Charlotte Matherly is the  statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter and send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.