The 22-day wait time for a Connecticut car title is four months shorter than it was two years ago, while the state has shaved $914,000 off its rent tab for this fiscal year.
Those are just a few of the fiscal improvements and savings to Connecticut taxpayers detailed in the governor’s latest financial report out Tuesday.
Titled “Changing How Connecticut State Government Does Business,” Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said it includes a number of different initiatives that have begun to make state government leaner, cheaper and more efficient – many of them, he says, initiated on his two-year watch.
In all, the report is comprised of 82 individual initiatives from 26 different agencies.
“When I took office, our state government was bloated, broke, broken, and inefficient, and not serving particularly well the taxpayers who pay for it,” Malloy said. “Clearly, we have a lot more work to do. We need to continue finding ways to make government smaller and more efficient. But this report demonstrates that we are on our way.”
Other Initiatives from the report include:
• The Department of Revenue Services (DRS) reorganized, going from five to four bureaus, resulting in one less top level manager, elimination of two stand-alone business units, redeployment to accommodate overall staffing reductions and re-introduction of cross-agency project management. Also, five regional offices reduced to four with some savings reallocated to add general taxpayer services at each location. Reduced operating costs, clearer taxpayer access and staff accountability, and service improvements and efficiencies due to LEAN project management have lead to $8.25 million in operational savings.
• An initiative by the Department of Children & Families to reduce the use of congregate care, implement a statewide Strengthening Families engagement model, and increase family and community-based programming for children and families allowed the agency to improve services while also reducing its operating budget by $38 million.
• The Child Day Care and Youth Camp Licensing Programs administered by the Department of Public Health (DPH) were maintained in multiple stand-alone, non-integrated databases. In July 2011 and April 2012, the Department of Public Health’s Child Day Care Licensing Program and Youth Camp Licensing Program transitioned to a new enterprise-wide licensing system. Field workers can now view the database remotely and download results of inspections directly into the system. As a result of time-savings, DPH has completed 1,900 more inspections per year, reducing overtime and the need for new hiring.
