Finally, Someone Willing To Cut Government

Editor, Times-Union:
I want to commend Kosciusko County Prosecutor Brad Voelz for what appears to be a bold embrace of the future.
For years, elected officials have talked about smaller government, greater efficiency and doing more with less. But when it comes time to actually reduce the size of government, suddenly everyone gets nervous. Cutting government jobs, especially jobs connected to law enforcement, has traditionally been considered the third rail of local politics.
Brad Voelz, apparently, is not going to be rattled by that.
The Prosecutor’s Office is exploring Axon Justice, part of an expanding technology platform that promises to dramatically reduce the amount of human labor required throughout the criminal justice system. Axon’s artificial intelligence can summarize hours of evidence, identify important moments in recordings, transcribe interviews and video, organize digital evidence and dramatically reduce the time prosecutors spend reviewing cases.
Axon even offers Draft One, which uses artificial intelligence to create police report narratives from body camera audio, potentially saving officers significant time previously spent writing reports.
This is exactly the kind of technological innovation fiscal conservatives have been waiting for.
After all, if artificial intelligence can perform hours of evidence review in minutes, draft police reports in seconds, automate transcription, organize evidence and streamline discovery, the taxpayers should eventually see enormous savings in personnel costs.
Otherwise, what exactly are we buying?
Surely the plan cannot be to maintain the same number of government employees, maintain the same payroll, maintain the same benefits and pensions, and then add millions of dollars worth of privately owned technology on top of it all.
That wouldn’t be smaller government. That would just be more expensive government.
So I applaud Prosecutor Voelz for having the courage to go where most politicians fear to tread. If these systems truly are the “force multipliers” their manufacturers advertise them to be, then we should expect future county budgets to reflect those efficiencies through substantial reductions in staffing.
Perhaps we will need fewer people reviewing evidence. Fewer people transcribing interviews. Fewer people preparing discovery. Eventually, as artificial intelligence becomes better at writing police reports and identifying relevant evidence, perhaps our law enforcement agencies will need fewer officers performing those administrative functions as well.
Technology has transformed every private industry this way. Businesses invest in automation because automation reduces labor costs. Government should be no different.
I know reducing positions in law enforcement and the Prosecutor’s Office won’t be politically popular. People will say those jobs are important. They will say human judgment matters. They may even argue there are certain responsibilities in our justice system that should never be delegated to algorithms owned by a private corporation.
But surely those concerns were considered before we started down this road.
So credit where credit is due.
For years conservatives have asked elected officials to make government smaller, leaner and more efficient.
If Brad Voelz truly believes Axon can do what Axon says it can do, I look forward to him proving it in the next county budget.
Chris Plack
Warsaw, via email