The Governors Speak

New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller spoke of a "Just Society." California's Ronald Reagan envisioned a "Creative Society." Michigan's George Romney urged a "Generation of Progress." Minnesota's newly elected Republican Governor Harold Le Vander declared that it was time to embark on a "Decade of Decision." And so it went --on and on. Amid pomp and fripperies, snappy slogans and roseate rhetoric, Governors in every section of the U.S. stood up last week to deliver the season's inaugural addresses, state-of-the-state speeches, and legislative-launching talks.

Slaps & Riots. Tone and content varied according to the personality of the Governor and the local problems he faced. Claude Kirk, 41, Florida's first Republican Governor in 90 years, astonished both parties by calling a special legislative session to rewrite the state's 79-year-old constitution -- and then spun a web of romantic mystery around him self (see PEOPLE). In Maine, Democrat Kenneth Curtis, at 35 the nation's youngest Governor, called for creation of a Transportation Department and reorganization of the Department of Economic Development, because under the state's lagging economy "there are too many Maine people today who have too little." In Idaho, right-wing Republican Governor Don Samuelson took a taste less if implicit slap at outgoing Robert Smylie, an occasionally arrogant moderate Republican whom Samuelson had trounced in the party primary. Averred Samuelson: "This administration will never get to the point where it becomes too big for its britches."

In California, where student riots have periodically disrupted the state university's Berkeley campus over the past two years, Republican Reagan made it clear that he will brook no more upheaval. During his campaign, he had called for an investigation of troubles there, and last week he warned: "It does not constitute political interference with intellectual freedom for the taxpaying citizens--who support the college and university systems--to ask that, in addition to teaching, they build character on accepted moral and ethical standards."

"Squeeze & Cut." Many of the Governors' speeches last week reflected mutual concerns running through all 50 states of the nation. First and most obvious is the eternal task of attracting sufficient revenue to meet their needs. Since 1959, the states have enacted more than 200 tax increases, and their annual tax take has risen from $15.8 billion to $29.4 billion last year--but that seems to be only the beginning in many areas.

Rhode Island's Republican John Chafee said flatly that he would press for a "substantial tax increase"--which probably means introduction of an income tax--because of a "rapid transferral of expenses" for health and welfare payments from Rhode Island's cities to the state. In Massachusetts, Republican John Volpe, starting his third term, declared that his state's limited 3% sales tax, enacted in 1966 after a vicious battle, should be made permanent, warned that projecting the tax structure will be "arduous, complicated and demanding," and called for a full-scale study of revenue sources. Nelson Rockefeller said he was ready to set up the machinery for New York's referendum-approved lottery, which is expected to yield upwards of $50 million for state education.

California's Reagan, a neophyte in government, almost certainly faced the necessity of a tax hike, but proposed a tough-minded reappraisal of exactly what state funds were being doled out for. "The time has come," he said, "to run a check to see if all the services government provides were in answer to demands or were just goodies dreamed up for our supposed betterment." He promised that his administration would "squeeze and cut and trim" government costs, partially through a reorganization of agencies, until "we will build those things we need to make our state a better place in which to live--and we will enjoy them more, knowing we can afford them and they are paid for."

Urban Crisis. The crisis of the American urban complex, with its rotting center-city core and its increasing demands for intelligent planning as well as financial aid, was another central theme of the Governors' talks. Said Connecticut Democrat John Dempsey: "Connecticut as a whole can be a healthy society only if we join in a concerted effort to improve the quality of urban life." He recommended a new Department of Municipal Affairs, as well as new measures to combat air-and-water pollution and discrimination in jobs and housing. And New York's Rockefeller, whose bailiwick includes the nation's largest city, laid down the framework for a program designed to "improve the overall economic, physical, recreational and cultural climate of the central-city core areas."

Included were highly creative proposals to make New York City a state park district to facilitate outdoor recreation development, set up a program creating a county-agent-style welfare service to help deprived or undereducated city dwellers, increase middle-income housing construction, and float a $2 billion bond issue to improve New York's transportation systems--both transstate highways and the critical mass transit network in traffic-clogged New York City. Minnesota's Le Vander proposed a Metropolitan Service Council that would amalgamate the management of problems including everything from city sewage disposal to mass transit to parkland development around the 1,600,000-population area of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Federal Failures. Another troublesome topic was the issue of federal-state relations, which has become one of the basic problems in the structure of U.S. society. One critic of the Great Society was Michigan's Romney, who made a somewhat oblique attack on Johnson-style federalism: "The people feel the stifling consequences of overcentralization, conformity, manipulated consensus and an arbitrary unchecked power." Romney, who clearly sees this as a major issue in the 1968 election, last week released one of his key aides, Dr. Walter De Vries, to work full time on his embryonic presidential campaign. Said the Governor: "I expect to rely on him importantly in taking a long, hard look at what I'm looking at."

Nelson Rockefeller focused more sharply on the shortcomings of centralized government. Said he: "More than 30 years of ever-expanding federal programs have proven that federal authority stands too distant from local conditions to allow efficient use of federal funds by formulas and procedures conceived in Washington. To criticize federal programs for failing to deliver on their promises, however, is not to disparage the high purposes inspiring many of these programs. But we do want to see a dollar's worth of work done for every dollar spent. Our experience in New York shows plainly that federal bypassing of state leadership and ability to act as a guide and catalyst is both wasteful and self-defeating."

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