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Minimalist Georgia governor going out with audacious bang?

March 29, 2010 — For a governor who once frustrated legislators with his hands-off approach, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue is playing a surprising endgame as the calendar winds down to what will be, short of a special session, his last 10 legislative days.

Perdue, who has been chided for his lack of vision, has this year set about remaking state government with an audacity not seen since the days of Jimmy Carter.

Had he pulled it all off, Perdue in his final year would have changed four statewide elected offices to appointed positions controlled by future governors, consolidated several state government departments and remade the way the state finances transportation. All this and more, in a session in which the budget overshadows everything else.

While much of this ambitious agenda was falling by the wayside Friday, the state’s first Republican governor was engaged in a high-profile standoff with Attorney General Thurbert Baker over whether the state should challenge the health care reform bill in court. This very legalistic conflict was politically beneficial to both, shoring up Perdue’s sagging rep among conservatives as he heads for the sunset, and giving Baker, a Democratic candidate for governor, primo air time. (Both got their picture in this Sunday’s New York Times – shaking hands, appropriately enough.)

Meanwhile, the proposal to make the commissioner of agriculture, labor and insurance, and the state superintendent of schools, appointed rather than elected positions, died when crossover day was gaveled to a close a few minutes past midnight Saturday morning.

Plan C for transportation funding had by then reverted back to Plan B, with the re-appointing of committees to take up the governor’s proposal from last year. What happens from this point on transportation looks to again be the big issue in the closing days of this year’s session.

The previous day, the governor’s proposal to consolidate the state Pardons and Paroles Department into the Corrections Department was roundly defeated by a House where members voiced skepticism about Perdue’s late-term ambitions.

“Why now?” Rep. Tim Bearden (R-Villa Rica) asked during the debate on the consolidation measure Thursday.

That question hung heavy in the halls as well. To judge from the number of lobbyists lamenting the sudden involvement of the governor’s office in their bills, Perdue the governmental minimalist is going out in a flurry of engagement.

His agenda may have sagged, but Perdue got the vote he had to get, okaying the hospital provider fee. And he advanced a few measures, although at a high cost in time, like the hour-plus spent on debate and passage of HB 1184, permitting the sale of private health insurance policies across state lines.

The House also passed a measure which could extend Perdue’s legacy past the time when he leaves the office on the second floor. House Bill 1405, sponsored by Ways and Means chairman Larry O’Neal, would put Perdue on the Special Council on Tax Reform, where he would spend his last months in office working with a select group charged with completely overhauling the state’s tax policy, and presenting it to next year’s legislature for an up-or-down vote.

Bear in mind, this will be a new legislature with a new governor, facing a budget crisis which -- federal stimulus money having dried up – seems likely to tower over the current one. The commission’s findings, however unpalatable, might be the most painless alternative at that vulnerable moment.

If – and that’s a big old “if” – the commission wins final passage, it could be the stage for Perdue’s final swan song, one with more opportunity to leave a legacy than the final 10 legislative days of hard-slogging on the budget and transportation are likely to provide.