the Kentucky Post has published an article about the ideal characteristics needed in Kentucky’s next governor
What do we want from Kentucky’s next governor? Vision and political skills.
By Dan Hassert
Someone who has big ideas and the ability to inspire others to work on them.
Someone who realizes the complex problems facing the state won’t be solved with quick solutions.
Someone who can reach across political, geographic and ideological boundaries.
Someone who can compromise and accept criticism and ideas from others.
Someone who can lead.
As Democrats and Republicans continue the convoluted and whirlwind process of determining their nominees for governor for the 2007 election, The Post asked thinkers around the state what Kentucky needed from its next chief executive.
Here are their answers:
The former governor
The only man to lead Kentucky for eight years in a row in modern times knows what he wants in the state’s next governor: Someone smart, someone articulate and someone sophisticated enough to realize he or she can’t be a dictator, that “(his or her) solution isn’t going to be the ultimate perfect solution.”
“I view the governor as establishing the starting point for the purposes of opening debate on a particular topic,” said Paul Patton, Kentucky’s governor from 1995-2003.
“I learned that no matter how much I personally delved into a topic within the privacy of my staff and advisers, that process will not expose all the flaws, problems and opportunities out there. The legislative process will add improvement,” Patton said.
Patton said the next governor should identify one or two or no more than three “themes” and focus all his or her attention on furthering those goals. One of those priorities absolutely must be education, he said. “We really have to do whatever it takes to improvement education at every level,” he said.
But, Patton said, the new governor must first find a way to bring unity back to the capitol.
“The biggest challenge is to try to return bipartisanship to Frankfort,” he said. “Until that happens, I don’t see how anything meaningful, really meaningful, like higher education reform, can be adopted.”
The researcher
Michael T. Childress wants a governor who – when it comes to solving the state’s problems – doesn’t have a short attention span and doesn’t believe in “silver bullets.”
That is, he wants a governor who recognizes that the issues facing the state are complex and that solving them will take complex solutions that work over a long period.
“A lot of issues, a lot of problems Kentucky (suffers from) could be remedied over the long term if we got smarter and we got healthier,” said Childress, executive director of the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center, the think tank created by the state Legislature in 1992.
“It’s important to have leadership that uses the bully pulpit to get folks to focus on those two issue areas,” he said.
Childress said he is often interviewed by people who ask what one change Kentucky could make that would bring tremendous results.
“The problem is, there is no silver bullet, there is no one thing that can turn us into a top state in the nation,” he said.
The next governor should “be committed to the long term because it’s going to take a long time.”
The college president
Wanted: A state leader strong in both the public policy arena and the politics of governance. Must have strong dose of pragmatism. Must be able to motivate a historically unmotivated state, get residents to believe in themselves and pull them to a higher level. And must be able to bring Democrats and Republicans together.
Northern Kentucky University President James Votruba knows those are tough requirements for the state’s new top executive. But “I believe the stakes in Kentucky are enormous,” he said.
Above all, Votruba said, the new governor must understand that Kentucky needs more smart people to compete in a knowledge-based economy – and he or she must have a plan to address that.
“We need not just an education strategy but also a talent strategy,” he said. “We need to create conditions that nurture the talent already in the state, retain it and recruit new talent.”
The historian
Kentucky needs courage and leadership from its next governor, according to James C. Klotter, the state historian and an author.
Political skills would help too.
“We need to have somebody with a vision of what Kentucky needs and the ability to work with others to carry out that vision,” said Klotter, a professor at Georgetown College. “That may mean the ability to compromise, and knowing when not to compromise.”
Klotter said the next governor “needs to be aware what makes Kentucky special and unique, an attractive place for people to live.” That includes intangibles such as quality of life issues, environmental issues and green space.
“But a thinker isn’t the only thing you need,” Klotter said. “You need someone who can translate those thoughts into concrete action and can convince other people that that vision is the right one.”
The education warrior
The challenges facing Kentucky’s schools are numerous and tough – solving them will neither be easy nor quick.
Robert Sexton, executive director of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, would like a governor who becomes a student of education policy – and crafts a sophisticated plan.
Kentucky needs a governor who “will keep pressure on public schools to keep improving but with an understanding of what that takes. We don’t want someone who believes in silver bullets for education,” Sexton said. “It’s a more complicated process.
“We need someone who will spend the time and energy understanding that complexity.”
The state’s conscience
A lot of Kentuckians can’t afford health care. Increasing tuition costs are putting college out of reach. And the state’s tax structure continues to challenge the poorest individuals.
That’s the Rev. Nancy Jo Kemper’s assessment of Kentucky, and she’s looking for a leader who has the management and leadership skills – and the “guts” – to do something about it.
“We need someone who understands the $17 billion budget … and someone with a vision for the future, not just holding the current place, which is what we’ve been doing,” said the Rev. Kemper, executive director of the Kentucky Council of Churches. “We need someone who will use the bully pulpit on health care issues.”
The ex-legislator
Kentucky’s new governor has to focus on education, more tax reform and job and income growth.
But unless he or she learns how to maneuver in the General Assembly’s contentious new political environment, that agenda will go nowhere, said Bill Lear, a Lexington attorney who served in the state Legislature in 1985-94 and used to chair the Greater Lexington Chamber of Commerce.
Lear said the next governor must have the respect of both parties and the ability to work with leaders in both the GOP-controlled Senate and the Democrat-controlled House.
“We need a governor that can work productively with both houses of the Legislature,” Lear said.
“We have had a lot of breakdowns in our ability to get things done since the Legislature became split between the two political parties. The state cannot afford the kinds of political infighting that often typifies the sessions of the Legislature since that happened.”
And while the state needs a leader who has ideas, it also needs someone who is realistic, Lear said. “We need a person with a vision that is accompanied by a concrete agenda of specifics that will move the state forward.”
The numbers man
Ronald Crouch hopes the new governor is a person who deals in hard facts, not political spin.
That’s because for years Crouch has been traveling the state, spreading his message to business groups, universities, the media and elected officials – anybody who will listen. The message is that Kentucky’s population is changing, and those changes are already presenting great challenges to every aspect of public policy.
“I don’t think people get it,” said Crouch, director of the Kentucky State Data Center.
For example, Kentucky’s older population is growing faster than its younger population. Young families aren’t doing as well financially as their parents did. And an increasingly higher percentage of children are born to unwed mothers. Those trends and others bring significant ramifications involving retirement planning, health insurance, pensions, job growth, schools and tax revenues.
“The new governor will have to understand the whole issue of the changing demographics of the state,” Crouch said. He or she “will have to look at what the data is saying regardless of the political (consequences).”
The urban advocate
Kentucky used to be a rural state dominated by agricultural interests and sparsely populated areas. No longer. Little by little, Kentucky’s urban areas are growing larger and growing closer together.
And businesses in those areas are striving to compete in the global marketplace.
Unfortunately, the state’s government structure and policies – its Constitution, its revenue-sharing formulas, its statutes, its taxes and its services – reflect the old establishment, said Sylvia L. Lovely, executive director of the Kentucky League of Cities.
Those things must be updated, she said. The state’s next governor must realize “the importance of developing an urban agenda for the state,” Lovely said. “We have turned urban without giving a lot of thought to doing that properly.
“The world has changed. We don’t look at things the same way,” she added.
The next governor must think big and act small, Lovely said. “That will require a lot of thinking outside the box and bringing it down to a micro level of specific policy.”
The mayor
With pension costs spiraling out of control, cities are trouble.
In Covington, for example, the city will have to pay $5.5 million to the state pension fund in the 2007-08 fiscal year, some $900,000 more than the current year, Covington Mayor Butch Callery said.
Callery wants a governor who will understand the importance of cities, recognize the dire financial straits many are in, and do something about it.
Over 300 Kentucky cities are affected by the pension crisis, he said, and they don’t even have a representative on the state pension board.
“It’s pretty serious. I could see it causing the dissolution of some cities,” Callery said. “In other states having similar problems, the governors are taking leadership roles. The governors stepped up and made compromises.”
The high-tech critic
Alan Hawse’s company, Cypress Semiconductor, competes on a global level and has offices around the world, including India and the Philippines.
Because Kentucky simply can’t compete with other countries on labor costs, it has to offer a smart workforce. That’s why he thinks the next governor should take the funding used for economic development efforts and stick it in higher education. “100 percent (of it),” Hawse said.
The vice president of information technology at Cypress Semiconductor’s office in Lexington and a sometime newspaper columnist, Hawse has become sort of the high-tech critic of state government. He thinks Kentucky’s next governor has to change the state’s economic development strategy.
Bringing the massive Toyota plant to Georgetown decades ago was a huge coup, but it created a “home-run mentality,” he said.
“We’re always swinging for the fences for the next Toyota. Obviously there’s never been another Toyota, and maybe there never will be,” he said.
Instead, Kentucky has to get serious about increasing the quality of its universities – and get smarter about how it spends money, he said. The new governor can’t be afraid to use his or her power to “stop some of the silliness” in higher education, such as duplicated engineering programs.
“Silicon Valley is what it is because (its universities) provide the raw materials,” Hawse said.