Sooner or later, you just knew this would happen. The new
governor would have to have a little Come to Jesus meeting with some
legislative Republicans over their conflicting priorities.
Job one and two for the governor is the budget and business tax
reform and he's fearing some of his pals in the House have spent a
little too much time talking about eliminating the prevailing wage,
Right to Work and repealing binding arbitration for cops and
firefighters.
The governor confesses, "These are not issues that are high
priorities." He says everyone should be "building for the future" and
not dealing with "conflicting issues like that."
As Artie Johnson on Laugh-in use to say, "V-e-e-e-r-y interesting."
While he asserts that he respects the the legislature and pledges
to work with members, he does admit to "some level of concern as to how
they might impact the budget and tax policies" referring to the time
and energy being expended on those labor issues.
Put more succinctly, the more time spent on that, the less time is
spent on his agenda.
To underscore the point, word has it there was a meeting on
Tuesday to discuss these apparent conflicting agendas and the GOP
Speaker of the House basically said, we can chew gum and walk at the
same time; meaning work is being done on the budget and house
Republicans want to work on other stuff, too.
There is always a natural tension between the governor and his
legislative leaders. Ask Ms. Granholm and former Speaker Andy Dillon.
And this current exchange is the first example of that with the new
chief executive.
Perhaps some of the conservative R's want to piggy-back on the
labor unrest in Wisconsin where the governor wants to stop collective
bargaining.
The governor here wants no part of that saying, "We are two
different states." Could it be there are some members of his own party
who wish he was a little more like the gov. in the cheese head state?