If it costs a penny to learn you are wasting a dime on every dollar you spend, is it worth it? It wasn’t to the state legislature when it approved the state’s latest budget, cutting almost 75 percent of the performance audit funding going to state auditor Brian Sonntag’s office. That has steamed the usually diplomatic Sonntag (right), who is now beseeching the governor to restore some of the funding. Last month Sonntag told House Speaker Frank Chopp the $29 million auditor cuts were “ridiculous and offensive both to us and to citizens,” who approved the special audits in the 2005 election. Since then, Sonntag’s 15 completed performance audits have identified nearly $500 million in cost savings and unnecessary state spending. Cost effective? What other state program gives a ten-to-1 return on investment?In his letter yesterday – which is being passed around by Jason Mercier of the Washington Policy Center – urging Gregoire to restore $14 million of the takeaway, Sonntag notes that the cuts actually violate government auditing standards and “should be vetoed for that reason alone.” Additionally, he says, “enacting this budget into law could have far-reaching consequences, such as affecting this state’s ability to properly account for billions of dollars in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money that will be so important in getting the state’sfamilies and economy back on their feet. Comprehensive oversight of these dollars is absolutely critical.” With her pen poised, the governor might ask herself what she’ll do when the day comes – and it will – that Washington taxpayers ask where all that stimulus money really went, and nobody answers.