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Monday, December 17, 2007
Conservatives must reshape government for better
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For conservatives who want to make a difference, who come to government with an idea of reshaping it so that it is better positioned to serve a new Georgia, four items from last week’s news are markers:
• Technology. A well-run government is one that has the capabilities to amass the expertise needed in an emergency — Katrina, for example, or Okefenokee wildfires or Sept. 11 — and to be on the cutting edge of rapidly changing technology. Hiring and assembling that staff is nearly impossible and entirely unaffordable.
Gov. Sonny Perdue announced last week that 11 state departments and agencies representing two-thirds of the information technology in the executive branch, spending $617 million per year, will farm out those tasks to the private sector.
This is exactly what a well-run state should be doing: Setting standards, hiring expertise when and as needed, managing performance and holding private-sector vendors and contractors accountable. Yesterday’s government brought them on staff. Tomorrow’s manages. Hire and “fire,” as the situation warrants.
• Compensation. Georgia and most governments have a back-loaded employee compensation system: Lower wages up front, a gold-plated pension system at the end. Worse, still, is that the gold-plated pension system has a design corruption: Beneficiaries set benefits, with little regard to taxpayers. It’s done surreptitiously with formulas and rule-changes that attract no notice.
Perdue has proposed a new compensation system for employees hired after next July 1. The three options the General Assembly is considering, explained at a meeting last week of the House and Senate Retirement Committees, would move some of the back-loaded compensation to up-front cash.
The state will hire 66,000 new workers over the next five years. New hires want cash up front; younger workers nowadays don’t intend to stay with one employer forever. Give them the money in 401(k) plans. Two benefits accrue. One is that workers get better salaries and can take their retirement money with them. But the most important benefit, by far, is that politicians will be less tempted to corrupt retirement systems.
Bonuses, such as those given to Georgia Lottery employees, can be good for rewarding workers — but not if they trigger wildly excessive delayed compensation.
A well-run government pays well upfront and offers employees and politicians no temptation to rip-off the system when nobody’s looking.
• Health. In 1974, in a futile attempt to control health care inflation, the federal government required states to control hospital beds and equipment, with something called a Certificate of Need. President Ronald Reagan recognized it as ineffective and anti-competitive. In 1987, it was repealed at the federal level.
Georgia still has it. It’s restrictive. It’s bureaucratic. It’s anti-competitive. It’s something no conservative should ever allow to stand. Modern-day Republicans, at least in Georgia, are not there yet. They’re still trying to manage health care markets by bureaucratic rule. Hospital lobbyists, powerful and generous, use it to keep out competition.
The state should get rid of it as a prelude to bringing information and competition to bear on health care costs. But nobody’s there yet. Last week, more tinkering by the Georgia Board of Community Health.
• Transportation. In line with technology, the Georgia Department of Transportation is in transition. The DOT board and the new commissioner, Gena Abraham, are doing with transportation what Perdue is doing on water: Gathering facts so that when they attempt to turn the Queen Mary, it’s in the proper direction.
Transportation once required a huge staff of engineers and road-builders. Now it requires managers, and the ability to grow and contract quickly.
The agenda for conservatives should be to change the structure of government, recognizing that the era is virtually passed where the state should be toting shovels or programming computers. Instead, it should be managing the private sector so that the work gets done better, while assuring that we’re not getting ripped off. Set up a system, too, where they can be paid well — without enabling the connected to retire to Sea Island.
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Do endorsements matter?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We’ve discussed this before, and most contributors here insist political endorsements carry little or no weight with them. But surely they matter with some voters — or else candidates wouldn’t continue to solicit them.
In recent weeks the big endorsement was Oprah of Obama, at least to the extent that it translates into crowd appeal on the stump, as it did in Iowa and South Carolina. Over the weekend, John McCain drew favorable press from the Des Moines Register, Iowa’s largest newspaper.
In an endorsement that may do him little good in the Republican primary, the newspaper reminded voters that he’d opposed President George W. Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 and supported him on comprehensive immigration reform. Wrote the Register:
“The force of John McCain’s moral authority could go a long way toward restoring Americans’ trust in government and inspiring new generations to believe in the goodness and greatness of America.”
McCain picks up the endorsement today of U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an Independent who caucuses with Democrats. He also was endorsed over the weekend by The New Hampshire Union Leader, that state’s largest newspaper, and from The Boston Globe, which circulates in New Hampshire’s southern population centers. McCain has virtually conceded Iowa to Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, but is mounting a full-court press in New Hampshire, where he defeated George W. Bush in 2000.
The Globe said in its endorsement that “the iconoclastic senator from Arizona has earned his reputation for straight talk by actually leveling with voters, even at significant political expense.”
Do endorsements matter in highly-publicized races? Probably not — except to the extent that they reinforce decisions voters have already made. They really tell us more about the values and agendas of the individuals and organizations making the endorsements than they do about the candidates.
Today’s question is not really about whether you’re influenced by endorsements. We’ve previously established that most of you are not. It’s to identify voters, or voting blocs, who are influenced, if any. Oprah, I’m convinced, is one who matters. If she can convince viewers to buy specific books and read, she can convince viewers who may pay little attention to politics to follow her recommendation.
Lieberman matters somewhat with middle-of-the-road and with wavering Independents, to the extent they exist. A Lieberman adviser said the endorsement is because McCain “has the best chance of uniting the country in its fight against Islamic terrorism.” I wish that were true — but I’m afraid no such person exists. So what we’re looking for now is one who will persist, despite the polls, and do what’s best for America’s present and future security.
