Making bureaucrats expendable.

530 employees in Gov. Strickland's Department of Education, and they still have to outsource.

I look forward to seeing the Guv's plan for scaling back this Department, since they're clearly not necessary.

The Strickland administration paid a Columbus attorney nearly $50,000 to help it draft the governor's new school-funding plan.

The state Office of Budget and Management requested that Squire Sanders & Dempsey be brought in to draft legislative language because of the firm's previous work on education funding, said Amanda Wurst, spokeswoman for Gov. Ted Strickland.

The original assignment was for $35,000, but Strickland's office ended up paying attorney Alex Shumate $49,275 because of the workload and volume of legislative research, Wurst said.

"They were hired because of the volume of legislative language and research that was necessary," Wurst said.