As they struggled to close a state budget gap earlier this year, frustrated Kansas legislators approved spending up to $3 million on a government efficiency study that they hoped would make their job easier next year.

Although many legislators questioned the need to spend so much money on such a study, the measure eventually passed, and last month, the New York-based consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal was selected to perform the efficiency study and make recommendations to the 2016 Legislature.

Advocates of smaller government often talk about increasing efficiency as a way to cut expenses. Ideally, increased efficiency should allow government to perform the same duties but in a streamlined or smarter way that is less expensive. Sometimes, however, being more “efficient” actually amounts to government shirking duties, dropping services or pushing responsibilities onto local units of government. Such measures reduce spending but perhaps not in an acceptable or desirable way.

Alvarez & Marsal was hired in 2013 to do an efficiency study for the state of Louisiana. The recommendations that resulted from that study may be interesting to Kansas residents. The Louisiana report included a list of suggestions that supposedly would save the state $2.7 billion over several years. That’s a significant amount, but the report drew criticism because many of its cost-cutting recommendations already had been considered by the state, and many of its estimated cost savings lacked supporting documentation.

Among “efficiencies” recommended in the report was the sale of more than a hundred pieces of Louisiana state property. The sale would raise an estimated $28 million, which would help the state in the short term, but it doesn’t do much to cut expenses over the long haul. A few other recommendations in the report got considerable attention in news reports. The consultants recommended increasing Louisiana transportation revenue by selling more advertising on state roads, bridges and rest stops. To reduce expenses, they called for reducing the highway construction fleet and reducing the thickness of asphalt road overlays to one inch.

To cut health care expenses, the consultants suggested requiring more pregnant Medicaid recipients to use midwives or doulas rather than delivering their babies in a hospital. The study also recommended that administrative management for uninsured residents be shifted from the state to local government entities.

Are these the kinds of suggestions Kansas legislators are looking for?

Maybe the New York consultants got different marching orders in Kansas than in Louisiana, but the conclusions of the Louisiana study certainly raise some questions about just what these consultants will come up with for Kansas.