As a candidate, I said that as State Treasurer, I would look for ways to bring economy and efficiency to the operations of the Treasurer’s Office.

I have previously announced two steps that I have taken to follow through on that commitment.

My first full week as Nebraska State Treasurer, I announced that as the administrator of the Long Term Care Savings Program, I supported a legislative recommendation to eliminate the Program.

The savings involved there was $98,084. That represents about 1.8% of the State Treasurer’s operating budget. However, if that same 1.8% were saved on the entire state budget, that would be a savings of over $131 million.

On February 9, 2011, I announced a plan to save taxpayers over $200,000 per year. As I said at that time, every month the State Treasurer’s Office mails approximately 69,000 paper billing statements to individuals who have been ordered to pay child support. Approximately 34,000 are sent to individuals whose child support payments are not made directly by them, but are sent to the Treasurer’s Office by their employers, by the Unemployment Compensation Fund or by other sources.

In other words, each month over 34,000 paper billing statements are sent at a cost of about $17,000 to individuals who have no use for them.

As State Treasurer, I will be notifying these 34,000 or so individuals that they will no longer receive paper billing statements, but that, instead, they will be sent an e-mail notice of their account status if we have their e-mail addresses. If we do not have their e-mail addresses, they will be told that they can obtain their account information at our confidential website or by calling the toll free automated voice response unit’s telephone number.

This plan will save approximately $200,000 per year in state and federal tax dollars.