Plenary Session Transcripts

Governors Attending:

Guests:

Discussion Subjects:

The states and Congress; the states and health care; state of the states: intergovernmental perspectives; states and ethics in government; and states and their future agenda

Points of Interest:

The Governors were briefed on three proposals for health care reform. Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts urged support for the Kennedy-Mills national health insurance bill, which would set maximum contributions for employees and provide portability of insurance coverage as employees moved from job to job. Patients could still choose their own doctors, but a national system of coverage would eliminate the insurance paperwork that was currently required. Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, argued against the Kennedy plan, which he said would be financed by a one-third increase in payroll taxes and require costly increases in the federal bureaucracy. He urged support instead for the Ford Administration's proposal, which was voluntary and relied on the strengths of the private health care system. The President of the American Medical Association spoke in favor of AMA's proposal—MediCredit—which would use income tax credits to make health care affordable.

In the wake of the Watergate scandal, Governors heard presentations on ethics in government and talked about what reforms were being made in their states. John Gardner, Chairman of Common Cause, noted that states had been more responsive than the federal government with respect to post-Watergate housecleaning. He urged Governors to use their executive authority where they were confronted with legislative blockage, to disclose their own personal finances and business relationships, and to make their agencies more open to the public and to public input.

Intergovernmental relations—both state-federal and state-local—were discussed. Speaking on behalf of local governments, St. Louis County Supervisor Lawrence Roos said states had impeded action that could lead toward reorganization of local governments into more effective service delivery agencies. He also argued that few states had: established and supported meaningful substate regional planning and implementation bodes; sorted out and defined city and county functions to avoid interjurisdictional infighting; or assumed a fair share of the burden of education financing, technical assistance for urban mass transit systems, health and hospital care, and construction and operation of regional correctional facilities. Robert Merriam of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations responded that local officials themselves resisted state intervention as threatening.

During consideration of proposed policy positions, there were lively and at times heated exchanges concerning the issues of health care financing, ethics in government, and a proposal for foreign oil price supply guarantees. With respect to health care financing, concern was expressed that a commitment to ensure health care for all citizens not result in a federal takeover of the provision of care. Concerning government ethics and a proposed policy supporting such actions as campaign finance reform, a number of Governors were opposed to the adoption of any language that would reflect negatively on incumbent officials. Non-northeastern Governors questioned the fairness of a proposal by northeastern Governors to seek federal help for states such as theirs whose reliance on foreign oil left them vulnerable to distorted foreign oil prices.

Memorable Quotes:

In his opening remarks, association chairman Daniel Evans of Washington said: "The imagination of the federal establishment seems to know no bounds when it comes to undeeded and improper meddling. Just recently, for example, the States have been advised by the United States Civil Service Commission that any state or local employees who receive salary money from revenue sharing are thereby covered by the Hatch Act. Any such attempt is a direct threat to the concept of revenue sharing itself and will be vigorously opposed by the States."

U.S. Representative John Brademas of Indiana said: "There are those who look at the extraordinary revelations of the last year and respond to them with despair. I am not among them. I believe that the events we call Watergate can, if we respond to them wisely and well, save the American constitutional system, but with two provisos. First, provided that we do not retreat from the process of politics, and second, provided that all of us in public office seek new ways of working with one another to meet the Nation's problems. I believe the time has come for us as leaders in Congress and for you as leaders of your States to begin working together far more closely that we have been doing. This National Governors' Conference, it seems to me, marks the beginnings of that new era of cooperation." In contrast, U.S. Representative John B. Anderson, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, said: "I think that, in addition to the traumatic effects of the impeachment inquiry on the power and the prestige of the American presidency, we ought to remember that the seeds of our present crisis of confidence were sown before Watergate. This not to put in the category of de minimis the moral squalor of that affair, but I would suggest that the experience that state and local governments had with the failure of federal delivery systems and federal programs in the later half of the decade of the 1960s was also a very important factor in bringing about the crisis of confidence in government."

John Gardner, Chairman of Common Cause, said: "...the States have been far more responsive than has the Congress to citizen concerns for a house-cleaning in politics...[Campaign finance] proposals developed by Governor Lucey [Wisconsin] and Governor Milliken [Michigan] seem to be most commendable...[I]n the 1972 elections ...two States, the States of Washington and Colorado, passed comprehensive 'open government' initiatives...After that, the Legislatures in other States moved quite rapidly...Governors had played distinguished roles in advancing the cause of responsive, accountable government. As important actors in the federal system they have provided state leadership at a time when leadership has been almost totally absent at the nation level. Governor Evans [Washington], for example, has placed his fullest support behind the tough new Washington State open government laws...Under the leadership of Governor Askew, Florida has continued and extended its very distinguished leadership among the States. Other Governors...have issued executive orders concerning the various money and secrecy issues when their respective Legislatures have delayed or blocked or refused action."

U.S. Senator Frank Moss of Utah said: "...every state government should have its own representative in Washington...I am prepared to introduce a bill under which the federal government would provide physical space and underwrite the cost of telephone lines for a federal presence for each State...The National Governors' Conference should undertake the task of creating a research and planning center, a think tank, manned by state officials on sabbatical to be a resource of new ideas coupled with the States' perspectives on problems which the Congress is or ought to be addressing. I would be glad to introduce legislation to provide for federal sharing of the costs of maintaining such a sabbatical organization."

Daniel Elazar of the Center for the Study of Federalism said: "We taught that the country was built on a series of levels...on the bottom was local government; in the middle there were States; above them was the federal government. Implicit in that was that Congress was above the States and the President was above Congress...Congress was criticized when the President submitted a program and Congress dared not enact it. The States were criticized when the federal government came up with an idea and they refused to go along with it. So we built a pyramid...totally in disregard of the principles imbedded in the Constitution from the first, and now the pyramid is crumbling around us because the Constitution was right...The Constitution suggests that, in effect, a properly functioning human system is not a pyramid but a mosaic, a matrix of different size cells and arenas, some of which are larger and some of which are smaller, tied together by appropriate lines of communication in which decision-making powers are spread legally and legitimately throughout the matrix."

Governor Philip Noel of Rhode Island said the following in support of a proposal to seek federal institution of a system of foreign oil price supply guarantees: "...there is a differential impact on New England relative to the rest of the United States from the present energy shortage and present price fluctuations...New England has traditionally played the role of a product outlet for U.S. oil refiners to help them optimize over the years their refinery yield patterns. You were dumping oil into New England at a buck fifty a barrel when nobody else would buy it in the world. New England has always been set up by the oil industry to be a product outlet so that when they had no place else in the world to dump that black gold, we were able to take it and absorb it by reducing our imports from foreign nations. Because we were a product outlet all of these years we were not able to develop our own independence. Now when oil becomes scarce and you no longer need New England as a product outlet, you say to us that you are not going to turn a sympathetic ear when we have a problem."

Selected Policy Positions Adopted
(1) Urging creation of a National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control to act as a training center and clearinghouse to study ways to reduce the loss of property and lives caused by fires; (2) urging prompt enactment of federal legislation to ensure comprehensive health benefits to every citizen regardless of personal financial resources, such benefits to be financed through a federal level mechanism combining public and private contributions in the most efficient and equitable manner feasible; (3) urging that federal funding for community development activities be in the form of broad block grants that would allow states to develop and operate their own systems for establishing and implementing community development priorities; (4) expressing the belief that any national development legislation should provide for improved state and local program management authority, the continuation and strengthening of multistate and substate cooperative arrangements, maximum flexibility in the planning and program activities of state, multistate and substate bodies, and a funding level for all multistate regional programs sufficient to produce significant development impact; and (5) supporting full personal disclosure by elected officials of personal holdings and business interests subject to action by regulatory agencies at the level of government involved.