State Rep. Costello to Sponsor Bill to Eliminate Underutilized State-owned Vehicles
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[In response to a report issued by the Illinois Auditor General that outlined recommendations on how the state can maintain a more cost-efficient vehicle fleet, state Rep. Jerry Costello II (D-Smithton) announced Tuesday he will be supporting legislation requiring the state to sell surplus vehicles in an effort to cut costs and bring in more revenue for the state budget.
"The most basic responsibility of the General Assembly is to produce a balanced budget that ensures tax dollars are spent efficiently and responsibly," said Costello. "We cannot afford to continue business as usual with lax oversight of costly expenditures like state-owned vehicles. The Auditor General's report sheds light on how money is being wasted and presents a perfect opportunity for state government to look inwards to make cuts."
Last year, the Illinois House of Representatives passed House Resolution 658 directing the Office of the Auditor General to audit the Department of Central Management Services' (CMS) operation of the fleet of passenger cars used by the state. Based on a sample of 100 take-home state vehicles, the audit made several recommendations, including potentially using GPS technology to track vehicle use and creating a consistent vehicle policy to be used by all state agencies. A major concern the audit raised was that a quarter of the 100 vehicles sampled were not driven enough miles to justify their cost. CMS had previously determined that a vehicle would need to be driven at least 7,000 miles in one year in order for the practice of providing a vehicle to an employee to be more cost-effective than reimbursing an employee for their using their own vehicle.
The legislation backed by Costello would declare the vehicles that were determined in the Auditor General's report to have been driven 7,000 miles or less per year to be declared surplus vehicles and sold to the highest bidder.
"As the financial crisis continues to impact our state, every dollar matters and we need to do a better job of identifying where tax dollars are being wasted so that hard-working Illinoisans do not pay the price for government mismanagement," Costello said.
The audit that inspired Costello's legislation, titled the "Performance Audit of the Department of Central Management Services' Operation of the State Vehicle Fleet" is available online on the Illinois Auditor General's website at www.auditor.illinois.gov. For more information, please call Costello's office at (618) 443-5757, e-mail staterepcostello@gmail.com, or visit www.facebook.com/staterepcostello.