Plenary Session Transcripts

• Economic Development and Commerce (EDC) – surface transportation issues; and telecommunications issues
• Human Resources (HR) – prevention and intervention programs that work: a conversation with a panel of successful youth; and roundtable discussion about successful state welfare reform initiatives
• Natural Resources (NR) – roundtable discussion on reinventing the federal-state-local partnership for environmental protection
• Other Governors’ Sessions – School-to-Work Roundtable; and Amtrak briefing
• Plenary Session Discussion Subjects - Childhood development; jobs; federalism; welfare reform; and Farm Bill issues

Governors shared information about child development programs that were working in their states. One such program was Smart Start in North Carolina, a public-private partnership funded by both the state legislature and the private sector that used the workplace to promote healthy families and quality child care. Another was Good Starts in New Jersey, which combined state and federal resources with those of the community to help prepare low-income, mostly urban children for kindergarten by providing basic educational and social skills and improving their health and nutrition.

Governors also heard about innovative ways in which good jobs could be created and sustained. Donna Klein of the Marriott Corporation said that in the low-wage, high-turnover service sector, employees often faced problems that were not faced by higher-income Americans, among them language barriers and the inability to afford child care. To help these workers, Marriott had piloted a program called the Associate Resource Line, an 800 number through which confidential counseling was provided to employees by professional social workers trained in child care, parenting skills, and family counseling. Klein said that employee feedback from the program indicated a 28-percent increase in loyalty to the company, a 12-percent decrease in tardiness, and a 16-percent decrease in absenteeism.

Dave Dickerson told of the Best of West Virginia Program, a home-based industry that had been established to supply state park stores with goods made by West Virginians. Among other benefits of the program was that people could work from home, relieving the burden of child care. Another was the boon to state tourism. Dickerson said that a large facility selling exclusively indigenous products of the state was about to be opened, with an expectation that it would attract 750,000 visitors a year, most of them from out of state.

Rick Surpin told Governors about Cooperative Home Care Associates, a worker-owned company based in the South Bronx that had grown to employ 300 people as home health aides, the majority of them African American and Latino women and 85 percent of them former recipients of public assistance.

Governor George Voinovich of Ohio presented an update on federal legislation to provide states with relief from unfunded mandates. Although mandate relief legislation had died late in the previous session of Congress, it had been resurrected and passed by the Senate in the current session. The bill would, among other things: (1) require the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to publish a cost estimate for legislation containing mandates that exceeded $50 million in costs to state and local governments, without which a point or order could be raised against passage; (2) prohibit enforcement of the mandate without full funding to cover the cost of compliance as determined by CBO if any point of order that had been raised was not waived by majority vote; and (3) establish a mandates commission made up of representatives of Congress and the Administration, whose responsibility would be to recommend the elimination or modification of excessively burdensome or outdated mandates.

Senator John Breaux of Louisiana expressed concern that the U.S. House of Representatives had passed the balanced budget amendment after only two days of debate, and he cautioned Governors to look carefully at reports of how a constitutional requirement for a balanced federal budget would affect their states financially. Senator Breaux also expressed support for the concept of job placement vouchers, which could be redeemed by private-sector employers who offered jobs to welfare recipients.

President Bill Clinton told Governors that since his election, federal spending had been cut by more than one-quarter of a trillion dollars, 300 domestic programs had been cut, and 100,000 federal jobs had been eliminated, making the federal government the smallest it had been since the Administration of John F. Kennedy. He also reported significant federal streamlining that included reducing the Small Business Administration's loan application from a document one inch thick to a single page. The President went on to report that he had signed an executive order to encourage partnerships with the private sector in the ownership, financing, and construction of infrastructures in order to give states the same flexibility that was enjoyed by the private sector in raising funding for infrastructure projects. He said that Transportation Secretary Federico Peña was announcing a series of 35 new infrastructure projects in 21 states to mobilize nearly $2 billion in investment capital for construction of roads, bridges, and the like.

The 1994 mid-term elections had shifted control of the U.S. House of Representatives to Republicans for the first time in 40 years. The new Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, addressed Governors regarding both the changes he observed taking place in American society and the federal reforms he was proposing that would benefit the states. Among the societal changes he observed were failure of the welfare state, the renewal of national pride, the need to reestablish a sense of civic responsibility, and recognition that problem-solving extended beyond government to individuals and communities. Besides his goal of achieving a balanced budget by 2002, the Speaker told Governors that at the suggestion of Michigan Governor John Engler, he proposed establishing the first Tuesday of each month as Corrections Day, when states could let the federal government know of 'stupid' things it was doing. On the recommendation of New York Governor George Pataki, he advocated the enactment of legislation that would provide incentives for states to conserve federal dollars by allowing them to retain a portion of what they were able to save, to be used at their discretion. He also asked Governors to help develop a federal cost-cutting contract, indicating what changes could be made in federal mandates that would help states spend less.

Georgia Governor Zell Miller began his introduction of U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich by quoting a Georgia political writer as follows: "Governor Zell Miller, Democrat, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Republican, have much in common. Both are former history professors and both are boat rockers of the first magnitude. Neither can abide the status quo. Provocative and occasionally off-the-wall ideas erupt like Roman candles in each of their heads." Miller went on to say about Gingrich: "…to the press and the public, if you think this man is a passing fad or one who is going to have his 15 minutes of fame and then disappear or if you think he is going to self-destruct, you had better think again. This man is for real. He is going to be around a long time. He can take it, he can dish it out."

President Clinton said: "Our…goal must be to dramatically restructure the relationship between the federal government and the states, to create a stronger partnership on behalf of our people that goes to the heart of what I have called the New Covenant of Opportunity and Responsibility. I believe the federal government's job is to expand opportunity and shrink bureaucracy. Therefore, I think it is clearly the thing for us to do to try to shift more responsibility to the states, to the localities, and where appropriate, to the private sector, and therefore give you the opportunity to solve problems working with your people…"

Selected Policy Positions Adopted:
(1) Supporting flexibility for states to enact welfare reforms without having to request federal waivers; (2) expressing the belief that any consolidation of income assistance programs should recognize the national interest in protecting and serving children, include significant transferability of funds between block grants, and preclude cost shifts to the states; (3) proposing consolidation of federal child care programs into a single program based on the Child Care Development Block Grant program; (4) calling for a more integrated approach to long-term care, including the availability of such services as home- and community-based care, in order to prevent or delay placement in nursing homes; (5) opposing a unilateral cap on federal Medicaid spending; (6) supporting legislation to help stabilize Mexico's economy through loan guarantees in the aftermath of the nation's weathering of a peso devaluation; (7) supporting line-item veto authority or enhanced rescission power for the President in the effort to help restrain federal spending, balance the federal budget, and assist in eliminating unfunded mandates on the states; (8) expressing support for renewal of fast-track negotiation authority for the President to help open foreign markets to increased U.S. trade; (9) calling for an end to the diversion of federal gas taxes; (10) expressing support for affordable housing programs that demonstrated an effective intergovernmental partnership and flexibility; and (11) asking the federal government to facilitate the transfer of undocumented alien felons to their home countries to serve their sentences.