As Dink NeSmith tells it, he was removed from the University System’s Board of Regents a year ago for the sin of being insufficiently submissive to Gov. Nathan Deal. In a newspaper column last week, NeSmith accused Deal of violating the independence guaranteed to the regents by the state constitution, calling the Deal administration “the most domineering and arrogant” in the state’s history.
The response by Deal spokesman Brian Robinson?
“This is a tantrum by another name…. When you don’t get asked to the prom, you can be cool about it and act like you have better things to do, or you can have a public meltdown on the school PA system and make wild accusations against the person who turned a blind eye to your inviting smiles.”
That doesn’t strike me as the response of an organization trying to refute an allegation of arrogance. It is instead a trumpeting of that arrogance. But given the record, it is hardly a surprise. This is not an isolated incident, it is a continuance of a pattern.
In 2014, Deal forced out two members of the Department of Community Health Board who dared to question a surprise proposal to increase nursing-home rates. ( The chief beneficiaries included nursing-home owners who donated heavily to Deal.) In 2011, he forced Warren Budd, a well-respected Republican businessman, from the Department of Natural Resources Board, again for daring to exercise independent judgment. Budd’s story was similar to that of NeSmith: Under Deal, the DNR board was no longer allowed to function as a board, with Deal’s office even dictating whom the board could elect as its officers.
Robinson’s response? “If anyone on any board considers himself indispensable, this is what educators call a ‘teachable moment’.”
Like his predecessors, Deal has a history of naming supporters and friends to important posts, but he taken that practice to new heights by seeming to ignore the issue of qualifications. To cite just one prominent example, he named a former director of the state GOP as Georgia's transportation planning director, a post previously held by a trained transportation engineer, turning a professional post into a political post. And Deal’s ambitions are quietly redrawing the basic architecture of state government.
In 2013, Deal stripped control of an honors program for top high-school students from the state Department of Education, giving it to the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement. In 2012, he shifted a major workforce-training program out of the constitutionally independent Department of Labor and into the Governor’s Office of Workforce Development.
As part of his criminal justice reform package, Deal successfully pushed legislation creating the Governor’s Office of Transition, Support, and Reentry, giving it duties once performed by the Department of Corrections, the Board of Pardons and Paroles and the Department of Juvenile Justice. He also just stripped the state Soil and Water Commission of its independence to bring its functions under his influence.
As a congressman, Deal used his political influence to try to bully state officials into allowing his company to keep a lucrative, state-granted auto-salvage monopoly. As governor, his office was also secretly involved in hiring a new director of the state ethics commission, a supposedly independent agency that was then investigating Deal’s political fundraising. To put it mildly, his record is that of a man who does not respect boundaries.
And in November 2016, Georgians will vote on a constitutional amendment giving Deal the power to take full control of local schools, stripping elected officials, voters and parents of any effective voice in their operation. The legislation does call for allowing “community feedback and input,” but if you listen to NeSmith, Budd and others, I’m not sure it’s wise to take much comfort in that.
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