New governors generally want to take office showing their fitness for service and their desire to begin on a good note. But it’s hard to hit the ground running when you falter on your first step. Unfortunately, that’s how Tennessee’s new governor, Bill Haslam, and Alabama’s new governor, Robert Bentley, started their tenures.
Haslam, whose family runs the nation’s 12th largest private business – the $20 billion Pilot Flying J, the nation’s largest tuck-stop chain – made a startling decision in his first executive order: He eliminated the rule established by former Gov. Phil Bredesen, also a wealthy man, that required the governor and his top aides to disclose their outside incomes.
In doing so, Haslam wrongly trampled the ethical standard of transparency at the highest level of state government by throwing a shroud of secrecy over the financial dealings of the public officials who control the state’s business decisions and contracts. Now, it will be hard to know if they have, or acquire, any interests in the businesses with which the state does business under their control.
Gov. Bentley, for his part, declared in an inaugural address at the Dexter Memorial King Baptist Church in Montgomery – a church once led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. – that people who are not fundamentalist Christians “are not my brother, and you’re not my sister.”
After the Anti-Defamation League, the venerable civil rights organization that sprang up initially to combat anti-Semitism, declared his statement shocking and offensive to non-Christians, Gov. Bentley issued one of those “if you’re offended, I apologize” apologies — a selectively disingenuous formulation that suggests he doesn’t really understand the official offensiveness of his core view that non-Christians aren’t his equal in his eyes.
Both governors should be above these regrettable stumbles.
Haslam can’t dodge
Gov. Haslam said his new policy of income secrecy was “consistent with what I said throughout the campaign.” He suggested that his policy, which does require him and his top aides to list their major sources of income, was good enough for Tennessee.
That’s easy for him to say. His own fortune in his family’s business may well put him above the threshold of temptation to bribery, corruption and cronyism. His top aides, though less wealthy, may be equally immune.
But that’s beside the point. Commitment in government to high ethical standards should be accompanied by clear standards and absolute transparency. Such transparency allows the public to scrutinize, and confirm in their own minds, whether or not their state’s key officials are leading by example and abiding by the standards which they would expect others to follow. That’s essentially the “trust, but verify” model that has come to be the government standard across the board for those who hold our highest offices.
Haslam can’t really duck this issue by claiming his fiscal innocence, and that of his top aides. He has reversed course on an important principle established by his Democratic predecessor, and he should make it right. He needs to restore the rule of transparency. If he’s embarrassed by his own wealth, he should think of the example he’s setting for the next leader of Tennessee.
Bentley’s religious corner
Alabama’s Gov. Bentley faces an issue that similarly reflects his sense of authority to ignore the standards of fairness to which all of his constituents are entitled.
His declaration of his personal faith as an evangelical Baptist may well be the context in which he spoke when he told his audience at the Dexter Memorial King Baptist Church: “Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother, and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.”
We don’t doubt his sincerity about the tenets of his faith. Yet many of his constituents may be Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, pantheist, members of other faiths, or simply nonbelievers. Those who are not evangelical Christians must reasonably wonder if they are as worthy in his view of the rights and services that he would accord those citizens who embrace his faith.
Many officials are well aware of the religious diversity of Americans and rightly take a more ecumenical approach to religion when they speak in a public setting, and certainly so in an inaugural speech. Gov. Bentley should have done so, as well. Instead, he raised suspicions of an official lack of impartiality through his insensitivity for those of other faiths.
Haslam and Bentley should seek to recover the ground the lost: Haslam by re-establishing the rule of transparency, Bentley by showing he actually understands the impact of his words by embracing policies that promote fair treatment. Their actions will reflect what they really think.