Those of us subservient to the State of Louisiana for sustenance got some bad news today: the budget shortfall for the fiscal year ending just 10 weeks from now is $319 million. That means I may get a tw0-week unpaid vacation (called “furlough”) between now and mid-summer.
Two weeks off? Fine, but I’d rather do it with pay!
- Paper, paper, everywhere: Why didn’t we do this online?
Anyway, we’re gearing up for this monumental budget crisis. So, what? Earlier this week, I attended an
institutional policy review committee meeting. The photo shows the conference table spread with paper from one end to the other. Every member of the committee, 10 or 15 in all, received an approximately 100 page printout of the policies we were supposed to review and for which we were asked to suggest revisions.
In this era of marvelous technologies, with web tools like Google doc’s, I don’t know why we have to (1) waste reams of paper at the copy machine and (2) meet for hours at a time in a stuffy conference room poring over proposed hard copies of revisions.
To those who argue our budgets are fat, this paper-intensive exercise provides ammunition. It’s one of those “We are the enemy, and it is us” scenarios.
“People, it’s time to go paperless!”
For petty state bureaucrats like me, “Save a tree, save my job.”
