Meeting the Challenge: Saving Taxpayer Dollars By Adopting Best Business Practices, Phase I

The New Jersey State government is vast, complex and responsible for a wide variety of activities. In recent years, the State government budget has been difficult to balance, and policymakers have adopted a range of financial management strategies to do so. We at the Chamber of Commerce Southern New Jersey have been consistent in urging policymakers to look to the private sector for ideas on how to economize while still fulfilling public needs in a responsible fashion. Certainly, the public and taxpayers benefit
when government can work smarter and spend smarter.

With this report, the Chamber provides some specific suggestions of private sector cost control approaches that could be implemented in the State government to cut costs. In some respects, certain State government activities have no private sector analog, but, in other cases, there are some significant commonalities. We have called attention to some of those areas of state government operations where private sector examples could be helpful in finding a better way - and a more economical way - to manage.

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Meeting the Challenge: Saving Taxpayer Dollars By Adopting Best Business Practices, Phase II

This is the second annual publication of the Chamber of Commerce Southern New Jersey's Board Council on Responsible Government Spending. The Council's charge is to offer specific recommendations to policymakers on how to reduce or control New Jersey State government expenditures by using approaches that have been developed in the private sector. The Board Council is a five year commitment of the Chamber.

The ideas on the following pages have been developed through the leadership of the Chamber's Board of Directors. Drawn from experts at Chamber member companies, three subcommittees were formed to identify and discuss specific cost control ideas. The disciplines, techniques, knowledge, and insights that these private sector experts utilize every day to keep their companies competitive have been applied to specific areas of State government operations and cost centers.

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Meeting the Challenge: Saving Taxpayer Dollars By Adopting Best Business Practices, Phase III

This is the third in a series of reports prepared by the Chamber of Commerce Southern New Jersey's Board Council on Responsible Government Spending focusing on potential New Jersey state government cost reductions. The first report, issued in May 2005, identified 43 cost control opportunities in the areas of public employee health benefits, fleet management, procurement practices, property management, space utilization, and information technology compatibility. The second report, issued in June 2006, presented 34 recommendations in the areas of state government employee benefits, energy utilization, distribution logistics, and cooperative purchasing.

This series of reports is intended to recommend how private sector practices can be used to reduce and contain state government expenditures and improve operational efficiency. In the preparation of these reports, we have asked Chamber member companies to share their best practices that have made them more competitive by reducing expenses and becoming more efficient. Our intent is to provide these ideas, developed and
tested in the private sector, to New Jersey's policymakers, which in turn can assist them in a responsible resolution to our state government's far too chronic financial problems.

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