‘Do-Nothing Governor’ does little to anger voters. - The Good Dean keeps the ball rolling for 2006. They don't call him the Dean for nothing.

Bill Shipp tells it all Brothers and Sisters:

‘Do-Nothing Governor’ Does Little to Anger Voters

Despite what you may have inferred from this space or elsewhere, please understand this: Gov. Sonny Perdue knows what he is doing — or not doing.

He is not rocking the boat. Perdue knows why he sits in the governor’s suite today. He defeated a governor who did too much. Roy Barnes was hyperactive. He made everybody in sight angry or apprehensive. He even tried to engage health care issues in Georgia, a ploy that drove medical and insurance interests up the wall.

Barnes is not the only overachiever Perdue wants to avoid emulating. Before Roy, there was Zell. Gov. Miller was almost defeated for re-election by a previous loser candidate. The reason: Miller overloaded his to-do list in his first four-year term. He tried to change the flag, fix education, exempt groceries from sales taxes and institute pre-kindergarten. He settled down in his second four years, created little fuss in Atlanta and finally became a senator with a penchant for challenging out-of-shape media guys to duels.

Perdue remembers the lessons of Barnes and Miller. Being wired is not good for your political health. Lethargy pays off.

Neely Young, publisher and editor of Georgia Trend magazine, wrote a column last autumn entitled “Georgia’s Do-Nothing Governor,” in which he listed Perdue’s perceived shortcomings.* The governor probably loved the piece. Or at least he was glad it was not headlined “Georgia’s Visionary Workaholic.” Voters might have been turned off.

When Perdue stands for re-election in 2006, his challengers may be strapped for material on which to attack him. He has a short record to criticize. So what if his foes say, “Well, he didn’t do anything”? That seems to suit the electorate just fine.

Indeed, Perdue has stirred up dust on several issues. Once the dust settled, however, there was just not much there.

Take the multifaceted health-care disaster in Georgia. When Perdue took office, he told his staff that he wanted to wait a year before he offered any sweeping proposals to cure the out-of-control Medicaid malady. He shelved most of his predecessors’ reform programs; then, he sat down and pondered. Meanwhile, the cost of Medicaid in Georgia rose to more than $500 billion in state and federal funds. In just four years, the cost of prescription drugs for Medicaid recipients has doubled, to more than $1 billion.

You want to know why Georgia has a perennial budget crisis? The answer is Medicaid, which has been growing and gobbling up first millions and then billions for nearly 30 years. Good economic times or bad economic times — it doesn’t matter; the Medicaid monster must be fed. Georgia taxpayers foot about 40 percent of the cost; U.S. taxpayers (including us Georgians) pay the rest.

Perdue has muttered about privatizing Medicaid. He says he wants to turn it into a gigantic HMO run by insurance companies. Such a suggestion has brought critics out of the woodwork, meaning privatizing will be scrapped or drastically watered down. A pharmaceutical formulary is in place, designed to induce physicians to prescribe cheaper medicines. It is largely ignored. Drug prices keep rising.

Of course, the governor has instituted some cuts. PeachCare, the health insurance program for children of the working poor, has undergone severe but baffling whacks. The state pays a measly 28 percent of PeachCare’s cost. The feds pick up the rest of the tab for the program that helps sick kids — and has a direct connection to improving education. As any parent can tell you, ailing children have difficulty learning.

Medicaid may be the most visible part of the health care challenge. Less visible but perhaps even more serious are the growing numbers of Georgians who have no health insurance at all. According to a recent Georgia State University study, a total of 1.4 million Georgians have no health insurance — not even Medicaid. We have among the highest rates of uninsured persons in the country, and the numbers are increasing. Both Alabama and Tennessee have lower percentages of citizens without health insurance. Nearly 70 percent of uninsured Georgians live in families headed by a full-time wage earner.

So far, Gov. Sonny has not delved into the staggering problem of so many Georgians teetering, without a health care safety net, on the edge of financial and physical disaster.

That does not mean he has been entirely idle on all fronts. Just check the headlines. He has been hard at work. The governor has consolidated all state-owned buildings under a single manager. Just about everyone says this is a wonderful idea. And he has demanded that all legislative pork-barrel proposals come directly to his office. So if you ask your legislators for state help in getting a new flagpole for the schoolyard or a few bucks for the neighborhood dance troupe, remind them to petition Perdue first.

At the same time, don’t bother the guv with questions about a vision for health care. That cloudy and complex issue obviously resides outside the borders of Gov. Perdue’s New Georgia. After all, he has his re-election to think about. Messing around with health insurance is one of those issues that is bound to get a politician into trouble very quickly.
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* Neely Young's article was the subject of a 10-25-04 post entitled "Where is it written that Perdue will be the 2006 GOP nominee for Gov.?, Part II -- Georgia's Do-Nothing Governor." He followed up his earlier article in one offering the Gov. some suggestions that was the subject of a 12-12-04 post.