THE RESPONSE TO a column I wrote last week offering up some state government programs we could do without has been overwhelming. While many responses were based on assumptions that don't have a lot to do with the reality of government, several came from people who know their way around government -- the very people who need to get involved if we are to make smart cuts rather than continuing to cripple our most vital programs.

Most of the suggestions, like my own, amount to no more than pocket change. But while it takes a while to reach your goal, nickels and dimes do add up.

A legislator-turned-judge suggested we eliminate the comptroller general, "a true anachronism," and hire fewer spokespeople, "whose primary, if not only, job is to put a spin on bad news and interface with the media."

Others pointed to specific positions they believed unnecessary, from the number of full-time deputy adjutant generals (two) to the number of wage-and-hour investigators at the Labor Department in a state with little in the way of wage-and-hour laws. (That caller used to run the federal wage-and-hour division in South Carolina and reported having the same number of employees to enforce federal laws as the state had.)

The former director of a major state agency points to duplication in the missions of the Continuum of Care and Managed Treatment Services (I've never even heard of the latter), to the redundant position of "chief of staff" in agencies with directors and to mid-level bloat in such departments as Juvenile Justice, Corrections, Mental Health and Social Services.

"You will find layer after layer of middle managers, deputy directors, assistant deputy directors, associate deputy directors and other folks who could be eliminated," he wrote. "I get very concerned when these agencies say they have to cut direct services when all they have to do is to cut out the bureaucracy."

An employee of the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation reports that the licensing boards have their own vehicles, "so we have multiple motor pools and half the cars sit there in the parking lot. With a combined agency such as LLR, we should have motor pool which would much more effectively/efficiently handle the state cars."

That reminds me of a good point raised by a caller a couple of weeks ago: Why do the agriculture commissioner and the superintendent of education and the treasurer and attorney general need state cars? Several years ago, the Legislature acted to reduce the number of state employees who are assigned their own cars, but it allowed agency directors (among others) to keep them. I can't think of a good reason people with desk jobs need the state to provide them a car.

Leslie Brunelli, an assistant dean at USC Beaufort, offered an important correction: USC Beaufort is now a four-year institution (it was changed last year). It shouldn't have been on my target list, since my reason for shuttering it was that we don't need both a two-year USC branch and a two-year technical college in the same community.

That's not to say we need the school; I had serious questions about whether it should have become a four-year institution, as I have about other public colleges. An employee at Greenville Tech asked why we need Coastal Carolina when we have Horry-Georgetown Tech, and pointed out that there is no public four-year college in Greenville to compete with his school. We need to sort this entire question out, which is something a Board of Regents could help with.

Hal Eberle, former director of the S.C. Policy Council, questioned why we need two medical schools. And he suggested some one-time fund-raising activities, renewing his old crusade to sell Santee Cooper and adding the idea of selling off some of the state's massive timber holdings.

I got only one significant cost-savings measure: Brian McCarty of Irmo suggests we revamp the state retirement system. "State employees should have simple 401(k) retirement accounts and participate in the Social Security system as the rest of us do," he wrote. "The retirements of state employees at rates near their current salaries in their late forties, teachers included, is a huge drain on the state's resources. We are essentially creating a situation in which we might end up paying out more money to those who do not work than we pay those who do work in state government."

That might be a radical idea, but another reader had a more modest target: the TERI program, which pays workers extra to delay retirement by five years. "These people have stayed in place while others with fewer years and lower salaries have been RIF'd," she wrote. Unlike the idea of phasing out the entire retirement system, this could save money in the short term, if it caused us to lose some of the retirement-age workers we'd be better off without -- as opposed to those we're lucky to have around.

All of these ideas make some sense to me. But I'll be the first to acknowledge that some of them, upon study, might turn out to be lousy ideas. What's important is that we have this type of discussion. It's something we haven't done enough of in the past.