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Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Pardon Libby now or later
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, drew 30 months in the slammer today. He was convicted in March of lying and obstructing an investigation.
He should serve precisely zero time in jail. He was not the original source of the leak in the Valerie Plame case. It’s questionable whether she was a covert agent at the time and, as we all know, there was no underlying crime. The original source was former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, though nobody was charged. Libby’s crime is a faulty memory.
If forced to jail now, the President should issue the pardon before appeals are exhausted. If not, he should pardon Libby , if need be, when they run their course.
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Two brands of conservatism begin to duel
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Those inclined to dismiss the tiff between Gov. Sonny Perdue and House leaders as the usual statehouse politics awaiting a kiss-and-makeup moment are wrong.
This dispute is not at all likely to end soon. Far more likely is that it will persist for the remainder of Perdue’s term.
No question, part of it is personal. But if it was the usual row between strong-willed personalities, the governor would have made his point with vetoes and House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) would have made his in the House’s 163-5 override of Perdue’s initial veto of the supplemental budget.
As the pattern of Perdue’s vetoes last week demonstrates, there’s something more going on, something that won’t be cured by the next legislative session or the one after. Or, most likely, during his remaining three years in office.
The problem is that they each define conservatism differently. Added to personalities, to the usual political games among those with higher ambitions, and to the traditional tension between the House and Senate and occasionally the governor, and the prospects are for a rocky next few years.
One example is the so-called rainy day fund, the cash reserves socked away to carry the state through economic downturns. Before the $142 million property tax rebate was vetoed, it stood at 4.26 percent, or about $693.5 million. Traditionally it’s considered full at 3 percent, though a governor has the discretion to increase that to 5 percent. Some legislators, and a key provision in a proposed constitutional amendment that passed the Senate, would raise that to 10 percent — or about $2 billion.
Prudent, right? That’s one fiscally conservative view.
Another is that elected officials lack the discipline to contain their spending appetite and, as with Ronald Reagan, the solution is to curtail revenues with tax cuts. Richardson, for one, believes that a generously endowed reserve fund insulates the governor and legislators from having to make difficult choices when revenues dip during downturns.
Some conservatives would “cap” state spending based on population growth and inflation. Some would cut taxes to impose spending discipline. And others would examine programs for effectiveness, with either program-based or zero-based budgeting, and shift or eliminate appropriations from those that don’t work.
Richardson favors zero-based budgeting, with one-third of the departments and agencies forced each year to justify programs from scratch. Perdue has launched a program-based approach that essentially contains decisions within the executive branch, with the governor evaluating and targeting programs for reductions or elimination.
On top of those disagreements, both the House and the Senate are now far more aggressive. Legislators new to power are just beginning to ask questions of the judicial and the executive branches, including the Board of Regents and the various off-budget authorities. It’s an extraordinarily healthy process of new eyes looking at old programs — programs that haven’t been independently examined in decades. They properly regard it as part of their oversight function.
One of the bills Perdue vetoed, House Bill 91, would have required agencies to provide detailed financial information to the General Assembly that includes contracts valued at more than $50,000 and consultants and others who receive more than $20,000. Perdue said in his veto that most of the information was available to the Legislature already and some of the rest of it was confidential.
Legislators think departments and agencies either ignore or slow-walk legitimate requests for information that is necessary for oversight.
Perdue also vetoed language in the budget that legislators inserted to target spending, saying they were improperly trying to write general law through an appropriations bill. That position sets up future conflicts if, indeed, the Legislature reacts by trying to put specific directives, like the number of pre-k slots it’s funding (77,775) in general law that must then be changed yearly.
This may be personal. But the real disagreement is not.
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