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» ESSAY ON STATE LEADERSHIP BALANCE

ALAN ROSENTHAL

PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC POLICY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE Eagleton Institute of Politics Rutgers University

The Hardest of Times … and What They Mean to Governors and Legislatures

Alan Rosenthal served as director of Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University from 1974–1994. He is the author of several books on state legislatures including Republic on Trial: The Case for Representative Democracy and Heavy Lifting: The Job of the American Legislature. Rosenthal has also authored articles for The Council of State Governments’ The Book of the States on legislative issues. In our system of separated but shared powers, governors have the upper hand in making public policy. As a rule, they do the leading, legislatures the following. This is largely because the governor is one, while the legislature is many. The governor decides on his or her own; the legislature has to struggle to achieve majorities before reaching a decision.

This imbalance between the two branches applies especially to power over the budget. In four-fifths of the states, governors formulate the budget, which legislatures then review and enact. And governors possess the item veto with which to fend off legislative incursions. The budgetary imbalance becomes even greater in hard fiscal times.

Presently, the states are living through the hardest of fiscal times. California’s problems may be in “a league of their own,” according to the Pew Center on the States, but nine other states are not terribly far behind and, with few exceptions, the rest are in trouble as well. Although the national economy appears to be recovering, the states still have further to go. It will be some time before they have replenished funds they have drawn on and caught up with investments that they have postponed.

This means that during the foreseeable future, the budgetary power of governors will increase further because legislatures are politically and structurally disposed toward lowering taxes and increasing spending, which is not the path toward a balanced budget.

The legislature is the most representative branch of government, and legislators are highly responsive to their constituencies. Their DNA is to make people happy. As many states limp toward economic recovery and wrestle with structural deficits, however, the challenge will not be that of making people happy but rather trying to keep them from getting angrier. Every legislator will be running scared and majority party caucuses will be circling their wagons as the minority party fires away. Under conditions such as these, fiscal and budgetary leadership is unlikely to come from the legislature.

Governors are no more inclined to promote unhappiness by cutting services or hiking taxes than legislatures. But governors have little choice. The governor is responsible for the entire state, not just one legislative district. Being one, rather than many, the governor cannot evade responsibility. In the legislature the party caucuses and individual members can weave and dodge; responsibility is shared and therefore diffused.

In sharp contrast, the buck stops at the governor’s desk; there is no alternative but to lead.