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Schwarzenegger to Fletcher: What it means to govern

By: Mr. Christopher J. Derry

We suspect Gov. Ernie Fletcher is busy crafting the State of the State speech he will deliver to Kentuckians on Feb. 2. As the governor thinks about how to inspire Kentuckians to greater things, he should assess how effectively California’s “Governator,” Arnold Schwarzenegger, recently delivered his message.

Both have governed for one year starting with unenviable financial situations in each of their respective states.

Probably no state in the union had sunk lower than California when “The Terminator” took office as its governor last year. Schwarzenegger inherited an annual budget of more than $100 billion with $22 billion in public debt looming on the horizon.

Critics doubted whether the governor could ever rearrange his state’s tax code to finance this mess. But he has already started to prove them wrong by properly assessing California’s fragile economic environment and demonstrating courage in the face of powerful special interests and their political pals.

In his recent speech, Schwarzenegger told his fellow Californians: “A lot of people say, ‘Arnold, why don’t you just raise taxes and be done with it?’ Well … we don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. We could raise taxes by billions but that would only further drive up spending by billions of dollars.”

This California governor is spending his political capital in courageous ways intended to solve California’s financial crisis and earn him another term in office.

How will he handle objections to his plan to cut California’s bloated budget?

He proclaims: “The special interests will run TV ads calling me cruel and heartless. They will organize protests out in front of the Capitol. They will try to say I don’t understand the consequences of these decisions.” But Schwarzenegger understands that governing entails addressing problems directly and clearly, so that everyone – friend and foe – knows what is wrong as a necessary condition for taking purposeful action.

For instance, California’s public schools – like Kentucky’s – are not meeting the learning expectations of its parents and yet the state spends nearly 50 percent of its $100 billion budget on education. Arnold asks, “What do we get for that money? … we still have 30 percent of high school students not graduating. That is a human disaster.”

How else could Fletcher describe the situation in Kentucky where only 68 percent of entering ninth-graders graduate from high school?

Schwarzenegger continues addressing another Kentucky theme when he points out that “we still have hundreds of schools that are failing. That is an institutional failure.”

More than 31,000 of the Jefferson County Public Schools’ 98,000 students are trapped in failing public schools. Yet only 2 percent of the students eligible to transfer will be allowed to do because there is no place for them to go.

California’s governor could also have been talking about Kentucky when he observed that “…the majority of our students cannot even perform at their grade level. That is an educational disaster.”

Using 2003 CATS test scores as a comparison, 38 percent of Kentucky students read below grade level and 62 percent are below grade level in math. Why shouldn’t Gov. Fletcher label Kentucky students’ scores “an educational disaster,” too?

Schwarzenegger calls it like he sees it. As the educational mudslides in Kentucky resemble the recent natural disasters in California, wouldn’t most parents respond favorably if Gov. Fletcher just laid it on the line?

What does Arnold say about the central figure whose performance could turn Kentucky’s rough lumps of coal into diamonds?

“And I want to say to every Californian who has a child: ‘Your child deserves a good teacher. An educational system that rewards and protects a bad teacher at the expense of a child is wrong. And I intend to change that system.”

With a few minor changes, Fletcher could easily deliver the same message to his fellow Kentuckians on Feb. 2. Imagine hearing our governor address the Kentucky General Assembly the way the “Governator” recently spoke in Sacramento, as he said: “My colleagues, I say to you, political courage is not political suicide. Ignore the lobbyists. Ignore the politics. Trust the people.”

Kentuckians from Pikeville to Paducah voted for Fletcher while believing that he would point them in the right direction and lead the way. Our governor will claim victory at the end of 2005 only to the extent that he remembers why Kentuckians elected him and then acts accordingly.

– Christopher J. Derry is president of the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank.

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