In reviewing the wide disagreement with Attorney General Dustin McDaniel’s practice of deciding who will benefit from lawsuits he wins in the state’s name, John Brummett takes the argument for legislative control of such money further — to all “cash” funds generated by state agencies.
But then I also argue that the same goes for all these regulatory agencies that collect their own cash, from licensing and so forth, generating what gets known either as “cash funds” or “special revenue.”
Typically, these regulatory agencies get the Legislature to approve their budgets with authority for them to spend their own cash funds or dedicated revenues. But it seems to me that all state agency money ought instead to go directly into the state treasury to await legislative appropriation by policy priority.
Just because an agency collects certain money doesn’t necessarily mean it needs all that money operationally.
I was thinking about this very subject yesterday when I heard the secretary of state had raised parking rates almost 40 percent on its lot on Woodlane.