For many years, one of the standing jokes of Oregon political life is the government's inability to purchase or operate computer systems without tremendous waste and/or inefficiency. It's so bad that the exponential productivity growth the "digital revolution" brought to private industry has essentially skipped government entirely. Taxpayers have received almost no benefit. The poster child for this laff-fest is former DMV Director Jane Cease, who "managed" a computer system upgrade at that agency that cost $75 million more than budgeted. Her punishment was to be transferred to an even higher-paying government job...all so she could qualify for the highest possible state pension.

Now - and not for the first time - the City of Portland is embroiled in another software system boondoggle. The City's Auditor (who frankly could turn up waste, fraud and abuse at least equal to the City's budget if he had enough days in the week) has found the project to replace the City's internal financial and payroll cost system has cost 3 times as much as originally estimated, is more than a year late, and has not accomplished its original goals.

Back in the day at Oregon Tax Research (after the DMV computer fiasco and one led by former Portland City Councilman Eric Sten), I used to jokingly suggest that what Oregon really needed was a ballot measure to prohibit government from having computer systems. After all, taxpayers get no benefit and every project is over cost and delivered late. Now, I'm not so sure I should have been joking. The damage to the taxpayers - and the credibility of an already-shaky government class - makes this less funny all the time.