Governor struggles with GOP
HARRISBURG – By the time the two-year legislative session finished in the wee hours of a Sunday morning last month, Republicans were screaming that Gov. Ed Rendell just doesn’t know how to work with the General Assembly. This governor is disorganized, they said. He manages by bringing things to a crisis, they cried. And the most oft-heard complaint of all: The governor still thinks he’s mayor of Philadelphia dealing with a compliant, Democratic city council.
Looking back at the first half of his four-year term this week, Rendell was having little of it.
“During the campaign I had seven major points and I accomplished six,” he said. “If Growing Greener passes this spring, I’ll be at 100 percent in my first term. And consider this was done without my party in control of the Legislature.”
As for criticisms that he hasn’t learned how to deal with the Republican leaders of the House and Senate, Rendell urged that the press begin concentrating on the substance of his administration and not the style.
“This is not Olympics diving. Style points are not important,” he said. “So like Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts, we’ve done very well regardless of style.”
Not in recent institutional memory has a governor from one party had to face a House and Senate controlled by another party. Republicans Tom Ridge and Mark Schweiker had both chambers on their sides. Democrat Bob Casey likewise had the good fortune to have a Democratic majority watching his back in the House and, for a brief time, the Senate too.
Not so Rendell. Since his first few months in office when Republicans passed – over the governor’s objections – just half his budget, the conversations between Rendell and the Legislature has often been spoken through bared, sharpened teeth.
“He’s dealing with a Republican House and Senate so when he schmoozes Republicans that makes us Democrats mad,” said state Rep. Tony Melio, D-Bucks. “He’s in a tight spot.”
Melio has been a loyal backbencher for Rendell but concedes the governor has had a difficult time. Part of the problem is that Rendell is from Philadelphia and many Republicans feel that city and Pittsburgh already get too much money and attention from state government, he said.
The second half of Rendell’s term could be even rockier, Melio ventured, because the GOP will not want to give the governor anything that might make him look good in his 2006 re-election campaign. Still, the lawmaker said any governor is in a good position because it is he who handles the money.
“He has to get tougher with Republicans and tell them he doesn’t mind helping them if they help him,” Melio said. “Sometimes you have to get brutal.”
State Rep. Katharine Watson, R-Bucks, has the opposite advice. She said Rendell needs to move beyond politics. Watson said Rendell’s experience governing a Philadelphia government that lurched from crisis to crisis doesn’t work in Harrisburg.
“The truth is, in Philly he got to do the good stuff and (aide David) Cohen did the nitty gritty,” she said. “As governor you don’t have that luxury if you want your policies to go through.”
Watson is joined in that thinking by state Rep. Paul Clymer, R-Bucks, who said Rendell needs to get a better consensus before he starts asking for things.
“When he asks for $800 million for the Growing Greener program I think, ‘I can’t vote for that,'” said Clymer. “I would say to him, ‘Where can we negotiate a figure that’s more reasonable?'”
That lack of consultation with the Legislature before announcing huge government programs rubs many the wrong way. Stephen Miskin, the spokesman for House Majority Leader Sam Smith, R- Jefferson, complains that no one to this day knows where Rendell came up with the $800 million figure for Growing Greener.
Miskin cites the funding for mass transit as another example of where Rendell governs in fits and starts. When the Legislature was ready to take up funding for SEPTA and PAT during the budget process last spring, Rendell asked it to wait until an audit of SEPTA was complete.
Then two weeks before the end of the session, with the audit still not released, Rendell turns up at a press conference urging lawmakers to put higher fees on motorists to pay for shortfalls in mass transit funding. Miskin said the governor never consulted the Legislature on any of it.
Rendell calls such frustrations the result of style differences between himself and the House and Senate. He notes that that he and the Legislature worked “without argument” in expanding the PACE program and on the $2.3 billion economic stimulus plan and on increasing spending for early childhood education.
In addition to those three priorities, Rendell notes he was successful in delivering his campaign promises to legalize slots, give $1 billion in property tax relief and cut the operational cost of government. The state government, he boasts, has 4,000 fewer employees than it did two years ago.
“We in Harrisburg are too worried about battles and political style points and who said what,” Rendell said. “Talk to the lady who got PACE benefits. She doesn’t care how it was done. She just knows that her life is improved.”
House Minority Whip Mike Veon, D-Beaver, said that like every other governor he’s served with for 20 years, Rendell has a learning curve that he’s had to deal with since arriving in Harrisburg. In this he is no different than former governors Ridge or Casey, he said.
“Go back and read about Tom Ridge’s first couple years and you’ll see that he didn’t know how to deal with Harrisburg,” Veon said. “He got low marks on how he was dealing with the Harrisburg culture.”
Veon said Rendell is learning that a governor has to be aggressive in dealing with the Legislature, especially when the opposing party is in charge. “Generally speaking he’s aggressive but there have been times when he hasn’t been aggressive enough.”
But the veteran lawmaker said Rendell has a very thin tightrope to walk. Like Melio, he pointed out that when the governor tried cooperating with Republicans, many in his own party felt he was being too cozy.
One of those Republicans who benefits from that coziness is state Rep. Dave Steil, R-Bucks, who said that whenever he’s had an issue he’s been able to get Rendell’s attention.
Though Steil faults Rendell for being too quick to try and raise a fee or tax anytime he wants something, he is sympathetic about the hurdles the governor faces in trying to get his agenda passed.
“The Legislature exists of 253 people and you can’t turn it in a short period of time,” he said.
And as for some of his fellow Republicans complaints that Rendell governs by bringing matters to a crisis point, Steil chuckled and said there’s a strategy behind that too.
Rick Martinez can be reached at 717-705-6330 or rmartinez@calkins-media.com.