LANSING ? Gov. Jennifer Granholm last week issued an executive order creating a new department from the combined departments of Management and Budget and Information Technology. The new Department of Technology, Management and Budget will become effective on March 21, presuming E.O. 2009-55 runs into no legislative roadblocks.
Kenneth Theis, current DIT director, will be the director of the DTMB as well as the state’s chief information office. Phyllis Mellon will serve as interim DMB head until the combined department is official.
Bob Emerson will continue as state budget director, but the EO renames his office as the State Budget Office.
The newly combined department was the third action Granholm took last year to reduce the number of departments. Earlier she eliminated the Department of History, Arts and Libraries and then issued E.O. 2009-45 combining the departments of Natural Resources and Environmental Quality into the Department of Natural Resources and Environment.
That E.O. ran into a hornet’s nest of opposition because of changes it proposed to the state’s Agriculture Commission. Changes had to be enacted to the proposal on the commission.
Granholm said she would combine D.I.T. and D.M.B. Once they are combined the number of state departments the state will have will total 15. Granholm has called for the state to have eight departments – not including the Department of State and Attorney General – as a way of making the state more cost and management efficient. Lt. Governor John Cherry Jr. is overseeing that effort, and Granholm credited him for the recreation of the new DTMB.
Additionally, the EO centers all the state’s labor relations efforts in the Office of State Employer.
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