The Seattle Times’ Andrew Garber wrote on Sunday one of the more insightful stories of the 2010 Legislative Session here.

While he made the pitch that the number and cost of state employees is high, he didn’t ask the more interesting question: Is the number of state employees in 2009, an all time high, of 112,000, the ‘right’ number?

Is it too high, too low, or just about right to meet the needs of our state?

Who knows. We don’t have objective, measurable data or models or probably even a methodology to assess that question. Too many teachers and professors, prison guards and foster care caseworkers? Too few transportation engineers and road crews?

Yet it’s hard not to appreciate the 800-lb gorilla in the room aspect of Garber’s story. With 60% of the cost of state government linked to wages and benefits for state employees, we can’t fail to ask the tough question: Do we have the right number of people doing the right work? Without that question answered, how can we know that we should reduce spending on public employees or go in the opposite direction? It’s not only about tax levels, it’s also about service levels and meeting the public’s needs.

Every company, government, non profit and other organization in the nation is stretching their comfort zone to ask these difficult questions. Government is not business–and our work is about providing essential public services–so demand for services increases during difficult times. Still, the only way we will seize the opportunity of this crisis is if we courageously ask core questions about the function of government. Systems reforms are struggling in Olympia this year, as one would expect, and we’re unlikely to do much structural change. We are not really asking the hardest questions.

Beyond numbers, the deeper question is: What are the core functions of government in the 21st Century?

Upon reflection this is, in the end, one of the real reasons that I am so deeply resentful of the Wheeler data center building. It is the wrong strategy, wrong technical direction and the wrong business model. My tactical battle to fight the data center is over, but not my front line attack on our lack of an enterprise wide strategy for the $1.2 billion-plus we spend each year on technology goes on.

My goal is to build broad consensus of the idea that hosting data is just not a core function of government and we shouldn’t be in this line of work. The larger dialogue about the size of government can’t happen effectively until we look under the hood of every area of government spending with more rigor.

During these very difficult times, when we are closing group foster homes and laying off fresh faced new kindergarten teachers, we need to have more courage in deciding what our real priorities are for our state government. I may not know much, but I know that hosting email systems is not one of them.

Your partner in service,

Reuven.