That is the roughly the quote from Rod Smith, the Chair of the Florida Democratic Party Saturday the 2nd of April. Chair Smith went on to state that as of that date our erstwhile governor had a 31% approval rating after only 8 weeks in office. That rivals President George Bush number 2's approval ratings in the last two years of his 8 years in office. Now that has to be some kind of record.
The comments by Chair Smith and the low ratings gave rise to a discussion about the difference between running a business and running a government. Nobody will be successful at running a government until they acknowledge that it cannot be run like a business. Republicans will continue to fail in government affairs as long as they fail to perceive the differences. My spouse, who can challenge the best of them when it comes to political discussions, made the same point in the above mentioned discussion. As she so eloquently pointed out, in business if you fire someone you fire employees. In government if you fire someone you fire your boss as all employees are voters, members of the state and in essence your boss.
Having owned my own business, and still owning one, run for office and worked in politics as well as government, there can be no doubt that running a business is not like running a government, no matter how you wish it so. Take for instance the governors latest effort to trim the budget. He is planning on taking $1 billion out of the state prison system by closing prisons and firing up to 8,000 personnel. Now as a liberal, I have to admit that a Republican governor cutting back on a Republican sacred cow like prisons is impressive. Especially since it is acknowledged that we have too many of them and they are not fully utilized. Makes sense in a very utilitarian way. But those prisons are in rural counties that are very susceptible to job losses. These prisons are usually the largest employer in the county and the only one with decent benefits and pay. Cutting 8,000 jobs puts 8,000 people on unemployment and skyrockets the state unemployment costs because these people are in areas where there are no other employers, industries or jobs.
That is one of the problems with trying to run government like a business. In business you just get rid of, fire if you will, the people from the department that are excessive or aren't doing their jobs. No more cost to you and the bottom line improves. Maybe your unemployment experience rate moves up, but no other real cost. That's it, you're done. Back to work. But in government you never really lose those employees, they become the unemployed and you have to take care of them also. It is also your job to try to get them new jobs, if for no other reason than you got elected on the promise to 'get to work'. Firing state employees is not the same as firing those in private business, you just add to your costs and work. And really, if we are going to have to pay people anyhow, why not just let them have a job? Better to pay them to work than pay them to sit. Besides it gives them a little something called pride to be able to bring home that paycheck. We could do with a bit of that in the state right now.
