Maybe state university officials can start a trend by unraveling some of the wasteful red tape from the state budget.

One thing government is really good at is creating red tape; one thing it is really bad at is cutting through red tape.

Red tape is the term we give to all those government rules and regulations that serve no purpose, but have to be complied with anyway. They might have had a purpose at one time that no longer exists. They may have been intended to solve a problem that no longer is there. It could even be that there was no real problem in the first place, but once the regulation is in place, it’s more trouble to get rid of it than to go along with it.

Almost everyone, at one time or another, has been frustrated by government red tape. That’s why taxpayers are applauding the idea presented by the six state universities to save hundreds of thousands of dollars by getting rid of state regulations that serve no purpose.

Kansas University Chancellor Robert Hemenway presented a recommendation to state legislators this week based on reports from business officers at the six universities. The recommendations indicated the state could save $400,000 a year at KU alone by not having the state duplicate the university’s architectural services and $50,000 a year by purchasing printer cartridges outside the state contract.

These are the sort of unbusiness-like practices that give government a bad name and drive taxpayers crazy.

It’s obviously possible to run a university without these regulations. Washburn University in Topeka, as well as the state’s community colleges and vocational-technical schools, are getting long quite well without them, according to Hemenway. Why not KU and the other Kansas Board of Regents universities?

Government bureaucracy tends to take on a life of its own that is difficult to rein in. It’s unfortunate that so much money is allowed to be wasted on government red tape, but perhaps the silver lining to the state’s current financial crisis is that it will allow examination of and perhaps changes in that wasteful spending pattern.

We can only hope.