The Concord Monitor editorial page agrees, with great exuberance, with Charlie Arlnghaus’s ideas to modernize New Hampshire government.

Arlinghaus’s first target for modernization is the state’s three-member liquor commission, an expensive organization that of late has been plagued by one scandal after another. Counting benefits, each of the three commissioners makes well over $100,000 per year. So why three? If the state’s largest department, Health and Human Services, can get by with one commissioner, why does the department in charge of peddling booze need three? The answer, as Arlinghaus concludes, is that it doesn’t. Two of the three commissioner positions should be eliminated.

Arlinghaus also favors combining the departments of labor and employment security under a single commissioner as most states do. Again, we agree. One department would cost less, reduce bureaucracy and increase efficiency.

He also would like the Executive Council to eliminate its arcane practice of expecting highly-paid state department heads to waste their time by attending the council’s lengthy meetings, just so they can be present in case a councilor has a question. And he wants the council to enter the internet age and post its agenda and other documents online so the public can view them. Both are great ideas, but we would go further.