Governor missed a chance to lead

Just before the holiday weekend, Gov. Terry Branstad used his veto authority to reject a number of legislative expenditures, including $55.7 million in one-time school funding.

Leaving aside the question of whether Branstad's decision was right for Iowa, we take issue with his recent assertions that he's consistently been 'crystal clear” about his position on the one-time supplement.

Branstad's general distaste for using one-time funds for ongoing expenses is well known. So well known, in fact, that legislators from both parties took it into account in their exhaustive negotiations. Their hard-fought compromise agreement for K-12 school funding included a 1.25-percent budget increase and that one-time supplement - money which, explicitly, school districts were not to use to pay for annual expenses, such as salaries.

No one would argue the final bill was perfect, but it was a solution hammered out over extended, largely public, discussions. That left plenty of time for the governor to clarify his position regarding the specifics.

Instead, legislative leaders from both parties appear to have been blindsided by the governor's personal definition of 'ongoing expenses.”

'From the perspective of House Republicans, those were one-time dollars expended on one-time uses,” Republican House Speaker Kraig Paulsen told reporters this week. '(Branstad's) analysis apparently was a little bit different.”

The governor should have made sure legislators knew that definition well before they struck a deal. But as late as a June 29 news conference, he continued to waffle, telling reporters, 'We have to make a judgment call on all things, and I've laid out my philosophy and my approach toward things. But then I also have to deal with the reality of the bills that are passed by the Legislature.”

'It's not a perfect world,” he continued. 'They don't pass things, necessarily, the way I think they should.”

In the end, Branstad struck the one-time funds, saying it would cause 'uncertainty” for schools, a poetic choice of words. He finally explained his view in veto letters released to the Secretary of State late in the day on Thursday before the Fourth of July weekend.

If Branstad always was so steadfast in his views about the funding compromise, he missed several opportunities to show it.

By failing to clearly, and publicly, explain his inclinations and his decisions, the governor failed to lead.

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