Governor Digs in to Fix Budget Process
Published Apr 07, 2004
Gov. Phil Bredesen
Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?
Gov. Phil Bredesen’s fiscal plan for Tennessee is coming together nicely, and a welcome bit of proof arrived in June 2004. That’s when bond rating agency Standard & Poor’s upgraded its outlook for Tennessee from negative to stable. The revision confirmed that Bredesen, who before his entry into politics founded and ran a New York Stock Exchange health-care company, is the right medicine.
Bredesen says his private-sector savvy is “a huge advantage” as his administration works to build a business-friendly environment and create jobs.
“When you come out of the business world, you just have a native understanding of what’s really important to businesses,” Bredesen says. “That’s hard to get if you come up as a lawyer or another more traditional way into politics.”
Tennessee government is “living within its means once again,” he says. “That is very important when it comes to growing businesses within the state. Having been a businessman myself, I adopted a very hands-on view of the budget. I want to know what’s going on. I want to be part of the decisions about what’s in and what’s out of the budget.
“Different executives have different styles, but if you’re from the business world and you’ve worked with budgets all your life and you have a budget crisis in the state, I think it’s the most natural thing in the world to roll your sleeves up and go to work on it.”
The result is “the right talk” about Tennessee as a business locale, the governor adds.
Bredesen’s management and negotiation skills are also on display when working with the Tennessee General Assembly – as evidenced by one of his top legislative accomplishments during the last session. The state’s antiquated workers’ compensation laws were out of step with competing states and, in Bredesen’s opinion, costing businesses too much money and costing the state jobs.
“My fear was that we were losing business,” he says. “Some of that loss is very insidious. When companies are thinking of locating here, they may initially look at 10 or 12 places and cut it back to three before they start traveling. I was concerned that we weren’t making that first cut because it was too easy to mark us off because we had high workers’ comp costs.”
Bredesen succeeded in pushing through reform legislation that makes workers’ comp in Tennessee more competitive, efficient and affordable. It refocuses benefits to the most injured worker, requires a benefit conference, ensures prompt payment and includes a medical fee structure to control costs.
While the legislation was designed to meet business needs, the governor says workers “come out just fine. Ultimately, the interest of workers is not only getting money when they’re injured, but it’s living in an environment in which they have jobs. You can’t get injured on the job if you don’t have a job.”
Creating and retaining jobs in rural areas is a major push for the Bredesen administration, and workers’ comp reform was particularly crucial for rural manufacturers. “In these rural communities, if a large manufacturer leaves, it’s a huge hit,” Bredesen says. “I saw this as something which was particularly urgent in the rural areas, where there are nowhere near as many alternatives for employment if a big company does move out.”
While the legislation lowers the cost of doing business in Tennessee, it also shows business and industry “that we’re serious in our state about not only creating now but maintaining an environment in which businesses can really prosper,” the governor adds.
That mission is the reason for the Governor’s Jobs Cabinet, launched soon after Bredesen took office in January 2003. The Jobs Cabinet includes commissioners from seven state departments, as well as representatives from higher education and business trade groups. They meet regularly to develop effective job-creation and workforce-training strategies. Does a prospective industry need a road connector? The commissioner of transportation is at the table. Specialized job training? The chancellor of the Board of Regents is at the table.
“What goes on in labor and workforce development, what goes on in education, what goes on in transportation all bear very heavily on the attractiveness of Tennessee as a place to operate a business,” Bredesen emphasizes. “The idea of the Jobs Cabinet was to recognize that business needs fall in a lot of these different areas, so let’s bring the people around the table who can really get something done.”
The reaction from corporate representatives has been extremely positive.
“A number of business people from outside the state have told me that they really like the approach, that too many states with which they do business are very compartmentalized, so you have to hoof it around from department to department,” Bredesen says. “I think the combination of the Jobs Cabinet and particularly some of the things that we’re doing to try to speed up the decision-making process have earned high marks from people who are looking at locating here.”
Education is heavily represented on the Jobs Cabinet because “education and economic development are just two sides of the same coin. You really cannot have one without the other,” says the Harvard-educated governor. The state’s budget – which ends June 30, 2005 – includes $190 million in new projects for kindergarten through 12th grade. Teacher salaries are now above the Southeast average.
“Ultimately, where people are going to invest isn’t so much where the roads come together or the rivers converge or the railroads cross,” Bredesen says. “It’s where the people are who are capable of making a business successful. I don’t think there’s a single thing more important that you can do to grow the economy than to have a workforce that has skills businesses need.”
Story by Sharon H. Fitzgerald
Photo by Greg Emens
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