Rep. Matt Hall – Should taxpayers pay for "ghost employees"?

Michigan lawmakers say they've uncovered hundreds of budgeted government positions that were never actually filled. Could other states have the same problem?

Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall joins the show to discuss eliminating "ghost employees," reducing government spending, and protecting taxpayer dollars.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:04

Hey, welcome back to the Lawrence Larson Show. It's First Amendment Friday where every subject is fair game, and we'll get to your calls here in a moment. Michigan's Speaker of the House says the state budget is padded up with fake workers who are never even hired, and the taxpayers are footing the bill. So I wanted to talk about it with Representative Matt Hall, who is the Speaker of the Michigan House and a constitutional law attorney from Richland Township. Representative Hall or Speaker Hall, welcome to the program.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Hey, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_03 0:34

So did everybody know about these ghost employees, or was this a a happy discovery, perhaps inspired by Doge?

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Yeah, uh no, nobody knew about this. I mean, year after year, uh got Michigan's governor Gretchen Whitmer would, you know, increase the budget. Um, you know, we saw the budget grow from 57 billion to over 80 billion. And every year they would add more and more uh employees in the government. And so we started looking at all of these requests that she was making for thousands of workers, and we realized you know, none of these positions are listed and they're not on the roles as employees. And so the more we dug into it, we realized they were creating thousands of fake workers that they were using to pad their programs, and instead of hiring people, they were just spending it on all kinds of things.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

Well, so tell me this, because uh, I mean, I've always worked for private uh enterprise, I've never worked in a government agency. But when the legislature allocates money to hire people, you know, personnel costs, are you allowed are are the agencies just allowed to transfer the money from personnel over to other uses?

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Yeah, what they were doing in Michigan is uh Governor Gretchen Whitmer was tying these uh workers uh two programs. And so uh that gave them the ability to just spend the money on the on the program instead of hiring the workers. And we uh so this was costing the Michigan taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

SPEAKER_03 2:08

So wouldn't this have been stopped by any kind of decent, uh like generally, what do they call it, generally accepted accounting principles gap? You know, isn't that what private companies do? They don't let private, I mean a private company would never say, here, here's some money for personnel, but if you decide you want to spend it on something else, go ahead. I can't, and I can't imagine why government would ever allow that.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Right. Yeah. So when we went forward with the recent Michigan state budget, uh we eliminated over 2,000 of these ghost workers. Um and you know, Governor Whitmer uh was very um against us, was very critical of us. But in the end, uh we got her to sign a bill. We estimate there were about 5,000 of these ghost workers in the state workforce in Michigan. We got rid of 2,000 of them so far. So she signed a bill to eliminate those 2,000 jobs, and she did not lay off one state worker. And so I when it got done, I said, uh, hey, I guess we were right about this.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

So I guess, and you have to wait till next year to get rid of the other 3,000 fake employees?

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Yeah, because what happens is they um we we couldn't, you know, Michigan is a Republican House and a Democrat Senate and a Democrat governor. Um, and so uh we would like to get rid of all the ghost workers. Uh we're we're estimating, you know, it's costing the Michigan taxpayers over $500 million a year. Um we like, yeah, like I said, we got rid of uh 2,000 of them, which was about uh 200 million a year that we got rid of. Um uh but she she she was too nervous to get rid of all of them. So we're gonna have to go after it again. But you know, not too long ago, President Trump even tweeted about all of the ghost workers that we found in the Michigan state budget. And uh and so I appreciated the president helping us uh amplify this message.

SPEAKER_03 3:59

Hey, Representative Hall, I appreciate you taking the time and continue the good work. And I I guess we'll have to check other states and see how many of them have ghost workers. Have a wonderful weekend.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

All right, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 4:10

That is the Speaker of the House of the Michigan House, uh Representative Matt Hall. Thousands and thousands of fake employees, absolutely unbelievable. Let me go first to uh Bill in New Jersey. Hey, Bill, welcome to the program. What's on your mind?

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Hi, thanks for taking this call. This was about the poll question from yesterday.

SPEAKER_03 4:30

Yeah, about daylight savings, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

Right. They actually did that about 50 years ago during the Arab embargo, and they had problems because it was that hour during the winter time made a difference at night. We actually had a crossing guard that got hit and ended up in the hospital.

SPEAKER_03 4:47

Well, and I understand when I went back, I've I've looked at that history because I live in a place where they've proposed getting rid of daylight saving and either going to one permanent time or the other and not switching twice a year. But do you think we'd have those same problems this time around?

SPEAKER_02 5:03

I would think it'd be worse because you got another 100 million. Plus, we got these bikes, they're medium size, red, blue, green bikes, there's no reflection on them. And then they got the cars and they're extra punchy, running stop signs and all kinds. So you add that to the mix, and you got a real mess with it.

SPEAKER_03 5:19

Yeah, but the the only thing is, Bill, do people not know how to drive after dark? I mean, because if if you shift the hours of darkness, I understand it may catch people off guard until they get used to it, but everybody's driven in the dark before. I mean, people are capable of doing that. Is it something that they say, oh no, if you ship the time uh and and and daylight shifts by an hour, we're all going to be crashing into each other? Sounds kind of uh sketchy.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

Well, that's what happened here. That's why they pulled it the other time. They had it for about a month.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

No, they had it for they had it for about not quite a year and a half. They had it from 73 to 74. Yeah. It went from I think it was January or February of 73 to about April of 74. It was very unpopular, and then they said, ah, let's do it differently. Let's go to uh Cameron. Hey Cameron, welcome to First Amendment Friday. What's on your mind?

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Well, after Mr. President's speech, my comment is why doesn't he close the our borders to Russia and China? All these people that come and go to school here, why doesn't he close it and put a stop to you know we're not sure.

SPEAKER_03 6:28

Are you talking about university students who travel here? Because the southern border is locked as tight as it's as it's been in 50 years. So you're just talking about taking but but the students aren't the biggest problem with illegal voting. The problem with illegal voting is other countries want to manipulate America's elections. They're not doing it by being here, they're doing it from a distance. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Sure does. And then another thing, you were talking uh yesterday's about the the time change. Oregon voted a few years back to uh have it at one time, and then of course our governor didn't want it.

SPEAKER_03 7:05

No, but here's the problem the Congress has to approve of doing it. That's been the holdup. And now the Congress appears to be moving that direction. Hey, Cameron, thanks for the call. Everybody talks about those weight loss injections. You know the GLP one drugs, and I'll admit the results are dramatic. They work by lowering your blood sugar and cutting your appetite. But what if you want to lose weight, but you don't want those painful weekly injections, especially when you hear about some of the crazy side effects of the GLP1s? That's why doctors created a weight loss supplement called lean. And the results, I can tell you, are remarkable. I've used it myself. The studied ingredients in lean have been shown to lower your blood sugar. They burn up fat by converting it to energy. They curb your appetite and your cravings. That means you don't feel as hungry. But listen, lean is not for the casual dieter with just a few pounds to lose. The doctors at Brickhouse Nutrition, they created lean for frustrated dieters with 10 or more pounds to lose. I want to get you started. I'll get you 20% off the regular price and free rush shipping. That means you can add lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. Visit takelean.com and put in Lars for your discount. That's L-A-R-S. That's promo code LARS at takeLean.com and try it out for yourself the way I did. Glad to have you on board and glad to take your phone calls and emails on a First Amendment Friday. Coming up in a moment. Menorah's made the cut at the Connecticut Capitol, but an activity scene got turned away for being too religious. So who decides which faith gets a seat at the table? We're going to talk about that. Coming up next on First Amendment Friday.