Matt Hess from Pennsylvania Legislative Services recently talked policy, education, campaigns, charities, books, and movies with Auditor General Jack Wagner.

I’ve decided to run for governor because I believe Pennsylvania state government is not performing the way it needs to in the best interest of the taxpayers. I believe it needs to be reformed in many ways; I believe it needs to be more responsive to the needs of the citizens.

As Auditor General, we’ve looked at thousands of different programs where taxpayer dollars are spent and made thousands of recommendations on how to improve it. We do 5,000 audits of year and have 25,000 in my five years as Auditor General. We’ve identified many areas that have been reformed as a result of our audits and many areas that continue to need to be reformed. PHEAA for example, our audit changed the culture of PHEAA, changed the management of PHEAA. It eliminated extravagant spending, eliminated bonuses being paid especially top management who were receiving bonuses in excess of $100,000. Megan’s Law, as another example, where the law was actually changed by the General Assembly to require the state police to enhance the website to provide more information to families to better protect their children and women from sexually violent predators. Our audits of procurement or contracting; we’ve uncovered that there’s insufficient competition in many of the bids of state government. Greater competition can reduce the costs of these bids, it can create more innovation, and it can bring in smaller companies that provide quality employment to Pennsylvanians. I firmly believe that state government can do a far better job.

Click here to read the full interview.