Navigating the bureaucratic spaghetti bowl of state government is difficult for most taxpayers. But when our state's auditor general gets stuck in the maze while trying to see how money is being spent, we are in bigger trouble than originally thought.

Auditor General William Holland found out there is no master list of programs operated by state agencies.

Holland sought such a list at the request of the Legislative Audit Commission, which wanted to see whether services were being duplicated by more than one agency or program. But before Holland could get to that stage, he had to ask each agency for a list of their programs; there was no master list.

His request turned up about 1,750 programs - and Holland suspects the list is incomplete.

If programs were regularly reviewed to discover which could be eliminated or consolidated, maybe we wouldn't have 1,750 different programs, some of which are probably performing similar functions.

And maybe the auditor general wouldn't have to be looking into the matter. And maybe the state wouldn't be in the financial mess it is in.

Holland should keep pushing for a complete list. And the Legislature as well as the governor should look for ways the state can operate more efficiently so money can go where it's needed most, rather than to pay bureaucrats duplicating the tasks of other bureaucrats.