State Government Streamlining Commissions: Ten Factors for Success

In recent years, as states have faced record budget deficits, a number of governors and legislatures have looked for ways to increase government efficiency and effectiveness in order to minimize the pain of budget cuts and avoid tax increases. Streamlining commissions can offer state governments useful tools for shrinking the cost of government, while limiting cuts to the goods and services that constituents look to state governments to provide.

We have identified ten specific factors that we believe make streamlining commissions more effective and their reports more likely to result in positive policy changes. We summarize these factors in this paper and hope this information may encourage other states to use streamlining commissions to provide a critical review of state practices and spending.