Media Musings: Bredesen brilliant thus far
Gov. Phil Bredesen’s strong start of his administration is due, in no small part, to his obvious belief in open government.
Tennessee has long been plagued by uneven legislative performance, especially in modern times. Usually, it acts only when it loses case after case in the courts and is forced to take action any reasonable person would have long ago done.
Captive as it is to lobbyists and special pleaders, the legislature has acted behind as many closed doors as it can find, the most egregious being the budget conference committee. There, the sacred cows were not often gored, because to gore the cause of one member of the legislature could lead to your cause losing. My favorite is the spending of $1 million a year for boll weevil eradication in West Tennessee for Speaker Wilder. Cotton has the largest federal support in its history, but that’s another story.
What has been so painful is that higher education has been ignored for at least a decade and been forced to pass on its pressing needs to the students in a state where only 17 percent has a college education and its best students leave for superb state and private colleges and universities with fistfuls of scholarship money.
Another budget trick was to set a pay raise and then only fund half of it and tell the university to match it from existing appropriations. Clever, eh?
Even so, pork has been hard to find for the last two years, because there wasn’t any “extra money” to be spread around. In fact, the state was broke.
Bredesen knew that was the history because, as mayor of Nashville, he had played the game. What he did was a masterful stroke: He immediately went totally public with the budgetary process.
Day after day, he sat there as his cabinet leaders and staff spoke to the realities of their budgets, A 9 percent cut, across the board, was on the table, including the most sacred of all cows, the almighty road budget. So powerful was its lobbying and political activism that signs popped up reading, “Tennessee -?First in Roads, Last in Education.”
I can remember a road lobbyist finishing his remarks before a civic club by telling them he had to return to Nashville to “protect his money” from the legislature. I found that to be the most insulting closing I’d ever witnessed.
Bredesen showed his humanity, at times, to the point it was bitter humor. He asked the leadership of higher education, for example, how much deferred maintenance and delayed construction of necessary new buildings was needed to bring the institutions back to where they should be. One billion dollars answered the leadership. Bredesen’s response was a classic: “I’m sorry I asked.”
At another hearing, after a quiet apology, he acknowledged he planned to go home and have a strong drink.
But the numbers came tumbling forward and he seemed to remember them all. It was a dangerous game to play with the dollars and the new leadership played it straight: on the table, day after day. He expected no less.
Republicans had to support him. They had cried for budget cuts for four years. Democrats learned quickly – especially Sen. Steve Cohen – that Bredesen wasn’t weak like poor Don Sundquist. This was a leader, a compromiser, but not to be underestimated. That could prove to be a serious political mistake.
Bredesen proved the truth of that argument. Open hearings and discussions showed all of us the truth of our condition and the problems we face. And in that process he found empowerment to break loose some of the old and terrible practices of the legislature. Hopefully, he will continue along that road. We all are the winners.
(Ed Kimbrell is a professor in MTSU’s School of Journalism.)