Governor's group should stick with efficacy

By John Florez
Published: Sunday, Aug. 7, 2005 7:00 p.m. MDT
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Oh no, here we go again! That was my visceral reaction to seeing another business policy group being created to improve state government. Somehow the bureaucracy has survived all of them. This one, I hope, will be different.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. morphed his transition team into the Utah Policy Partnership group, composed of business and community leaders, "to explore and implement innovative ways to increase productivity, efficiency and direction within state government."

Right there, that's a mouthful. However, he recently described it as "more of a policy planning staff." It would be good for the governor to clarify for the public, and especially the turf-sensitive Legislature, the actual purpose of the UPP. Is it to plan public policy, or is it to advise the governor on how to make government more efficient and effective? If it's the former, then he is in trouble; if it's the latter, then the group might play a vital role.

Sometimes politicians give businesspeople and academicians more credit than they deserve, believing they have all the answers. Businesspeople make their organizations work, and in academia we have seen people with great ideas but little patience to understand the means by which they are translated into action. John W. Gardner once called these people dilettantes. They are eager to give advice, here and there, but don't like to get their hands dirty to understand a system and how to make it work.

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Businesspeople and academicians understand their part of the world very well, but know little about how to make social institutions work. Unlike elected leaders, whose ideas and actions exist in a fishbowl for the world to scrutinize, businesspeople make decisions in closed boardrooms and academicians operate in the antiseptic faculty ranks protected by tenure. Politicians, however, are like football coaches; they have to produce on the field or end up looking for another post. They understand that for good public policy to be supported by the public, it must work for the general good. Most important, great leaders have a vision of what society "ought to be," rather than simply tending to the specialty parts.

Gov. Huntsman seems to understand the role of an elected leader when he says he carries the "hopes, dreams and aspirations of the citizens." And indeed he does. He was elected because he listened to and articulated them during his campaign. It is important for the governor to have the UPP focus on making government more effective, rather than advising him on public policies, which should be a public matter. To do otherwise would set him up for criticism about not having an open government. Besides, the legislative leadership is already skittish about the groups the governor has formed. Though, it seems, there are enough problems for everyone to solve.

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