Daily Herald editorial

Minnesota state agencies may hire as many as two dozen consulting firms (according to news reports) to help identify ways to save money and increase tax revenues. While that sort of effort makes superficial sense, it will produce no favorable results unless it is coupled with leadership and a desire to act on whatever the consultants discover.

Minnesotans may be pardoned for doubting that their leadership will be able to make creative and wise use of consultants’ reports on possible savings. Indeed, if they could provide creative and vigorous leadership, state government could identify savings opportunities with its own resources. In a way, deciding to pay outsiders is a concession that state government cannot do the job on its own.

It will undoubtedly be many months, perhaps years, before any of the proposed work bears fruit (if it ever does). Meanwhile, the need for lawmakers and the executive branch to identify a more efficient way to run the state will not wait.

Spending money to save money may make sense. But only if the project is managed well. Whether that can be done is open to question.