When President Donald Trump announced his plan to create the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he was addressing an issue that SPN and our 50-state Network know all too well – the federal government is bloated and needlessly encroaching into state and local governments.

It’s not only the federal government that could use a good trim. Many state and local governments rely on taxpayer funds to fuel any number of projects and initiatives, regardless of their ROI. How can taxpayers push back on unnecessary spending?

When Elon Musk, head of DOGE, began using Alabama Policy Institute’s talking points on X, API staff saw an opportunity to seize the moment to reduce waste on the state level. Their solution was ALDODGE, an Alabama-specific counterpart to DOGE aimed at monitoring and trimming state government spending. 

“We decided to try to catch some of the lightning in a bottle of the public’s attention on this at the federal level and bring it to the states,” said API President Stephanie Smith. “Those of us who have been in the limited government, free-market world for a while know that there’s a swamp in every state, there are large-scale bureaucracies in every state, there’s regulatory overreach in every state, and there are spending issues in every state.”

An initiative of API, ALDOGE aims to educate both the public and lawmakers on the excess of the state government. Almost immediately after launch, API began to receive phone calls and emails from Alabamians with ideas of areas that needed to be cut. The Alabama Policy team set up a portal to direct the public to ALDOGE. It’s not just the public, however, who has made use of the new tool.

“The most interesting thing to me has been the statewide elected officials and legislators who have privately reached out to me with their information about where the bodies are buried,” joked Stephanie. “They know best where the little nuggets we’re looking for are and have given us a lot of leads. None of them have opted to put their name on them, which is fine. We’re happy to be the bad guy.”

With the public’s help, ALDOGE has identified several areas that could be scaled back, both at the state and local level. In early February, ALDOGE released its first report detailing $125 million of government spending in this year’s budget that’s currently going to non-governmental organizations or municipalities.

While their focus has been on the budget in 2025, Stephanie has big plans for the future of ALDOGE.

“I want the conversation to shift in the budget hearings and legislatively to ask the questions that need to be asked that are being asked in Washington, DC, thanks to DOGE. Is this project something the state government should do? Is this initiative something the state government should fund? We need to start asking that question first and only then decide how much money to spend on it.”

Their long-term goal is to build out the initiative to include some sort of apparatus that would require the state to run any new spending by a body designated to critically think about government spending. The focus, as Stephanie says, should be on the people and what benefits them.

“There’s currently no thought process about how to return money to the people in most states. If there’s extra money, the government thinks that it has free reign to spend it. Our long-term goal is to have state governments operate with the mentality and understanding that these are taxpayer dollars, not public dollars.”

For other organizations looking to create their own DOGE program, Stephanie notes that there are several different components that can make a program like this successful.

“The most important component is to have an outside, objective source to push for reform because it’s very hard to change things from within; that’s where SPN Network groups come in. These groups have a working knowledge of bureaucracy, the regulatory process and the budgetary process – all very easy places to hide spending money.”

On the “nice to have, but not necessary” tier are tools like AI models trained to analyze the budget as well as executive buy-in. In a best-case scenario, the outside organization can work with someone on the inside that can pull levers on government spending. While API doesn’t have that yet, they’re hopeful that the tide may turn with Alabama statewide elections in 2026. Even without an ideal political landscape, though, it’s worth the effort to change hearts and minds.

“My overall message to the SPN Network is that there’s a swamp in every state. This is what the SPN Network was made for – draining swamps and pointing waste out. Whatever capacity is appropriate in your state is what you should work towards. This is who we are as limited government advocates.”