Across the country, Republican governors, many of them elected in the Tea
Party wave of 2010, have undermined women's health, crushed workers' right to
negotiate collectively, made it tougher to vote and imposed ideologically
informed slash-and-burn policies on their populations, often with little
attention from the mainstream media. Last summer, we reported
on 10 of the worst GOP governors and what they were up to. Where are they
now? Culling voter rolls, beating up on unions, trying to sneakily ban
abortion—but also, in some cases, having their power checked by a determined
opposition and being forced to concede some defeats. And in a couple of cases,
they're under investigation. Here's our 2012 list of the worst GOP
governors.
10. Tom Corbett, Pennsylvania
Corbett didn't make our list last time around, but this year, the
Pennsylvania governor has made up for lost time. His attacks on public education
alone make him worthy of our Hall of Shame, but coupled
with a massive tax break for Shell Oil--$1.7 billion in subsidies for the
oil giant—his comments about taking responsibility
for future generations ring awfully hollow.
"The governor's proposal violates his own belief that the free market, and
not government, should pick winners and losers," George Jugovic Jr., president
of PennFuture, told The
Morning Call. "Let's be clear. By choosing to offer Shell a $1.7 billion tax
break while proposing to cut nearly $900 million to public education, the
governor is choosing winners and losers, and he has cast his lot with choosing
to further help a multibillion-dollar corporation over the education of future
generations of Pennsylvanians.”
Philadelphia's school district is in mortal danger due in part to Corbett's
cuts—nearly
$300 million from the city, which now faces a deficit of $218 million for
the coming year, and plans to
shutter 64 schools and privatize more. And if that wasn't enough, Corbett
has backed
a bill that would bail out the state's employers for their unpaid
unemployment premiums, while cutting benefits for thousands of out-of-work
Pennsylvanians.
9. Nikki Haley, South Carolina
Fresh from campaigning in Wisconsin for her fellow union-buster Scott Walker,
Nikki Haley is headed home, triumphant—to an ethics investigation.
Corey Hutchins at the Columbia
Free Times writes:
Subpoenas could be fluttering all over Columbia this week as an ethics panel investigating whether Gov. Nikki Haley illegally lobbied as a lawmaker decides who to call as witnesses in the case.
On May 30, the House Ethics Committee voted unanimously to reopen an investigation into the governor. The six-member panel had previously voted that there was probable cause to investigate, but then immediately dismissed the charges. After further consideration, and new information from GOP activist John Rainey, who filed the complaint, they’re giving it a deeper look.
She's also been rebuked by her state's Supreme Court chief justice over a
plan, approved by her appointees at the state Department of Health and
Environmental Control, to dredge
the Savannah River to make it bigger for bigger ships. “You disobeyed the
law when you did not involve the Savannah River Maritime Commission in the
settlement of this matter,” Chief Justice Jean Toal told Haley's appointees.
(The decision to approve the dredging came shortly after Haley attended a
fundraiser at an Atlanta law firm with ties
to the project; she denies the connection.)
8. Jan Brewer, Arizona
Jan Brewer made her name attacking immigrants, but she's got plenty of other moves under her belt. In recent months, she cheerfully signed a bill cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood, and topped that off with possibly the worst anti-abortion bill in the country. Opponents call it the “Life Begins at Menstruation” bill because it bans abortions after 20 weeks, but claims that those 20 weeks start at the woman's last menstrual period.
Brewer also joined the club of GOP governors who like kicking
around public employees. She moved to offer public workers their first raise
in years—but only if they agreed to trade in all their job security and let her
fire them on a whim. She also signed
a bill expanding school vouchers for Arizona students, giving public funds
to parents to pay for private schools.
In a bit of good news, a judge did reject Brewer's bid to dismiss legal
challenges to the state's infamous
anti-immigrant law.
Oh, and she wants a third term.
7. Paul LePage, Maine
"To all you able-bodied people out there: Get off the couch and get yourself a job," Maine Governor Paul LePage told the Republican State Convention in May.
The governor wants to impose his own form of welfare “reform” on the state in
the middle of an ongoing jobs crisis—and he's even willing to make
up stories and fudge
numbers to get his way. And what does he consider “welfare”? Everything from
disability benefits to MaineCare (the state's version of Medicaid -- healthcare
for low-income people). His Medicaid cuts alone could hit 65,000 people.
How LePage can complain that Maine has more people receiving benefits than
paying taxes, and then say he wants to eliminate the personal income tax is a
bit of a mystery, but he
doesn't seem to see the conflict. Maine collects over half of its total
revenue from the personal income tax—but LePage wants to lower tax rates on the
top earners. Next year the rate will fall from 8.5 percent to 7.95, and the
governor wanted to drop it to 4 percent but couldn't get away with that and keep
the state functioning.
6. Chris Christie, New Jersey
Chris Christie likes to bluster and swagger – it's sort of his calling card. He's frequently caught saying awful things—like a comment he made this winter on a marriage equality referendum. Christie said, “The fact of the matter is, I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South.”
But what's he really up to? Well, he's getting sued, for one thing, for unilaterally
pulling New Jersey out of a 10-state initiative aimed at curbing air
pollution from power plants. The Natural Resources Defense Council and
Environment New Jersey filed a lawsuit, claiming the move violates a state law
that required Christie to notify the public of his intent to pull out and allow
for a public comment period.
He's also pushing more
tax cuts, including $1.57 billion in business tax breaks supposedly creating
jobs—$900 million to companies that, according to the New York Times,
have only promised to create 2,364 positions. That's $387,537 in tax credits per
job, the Times noted. Why do we get the feeling that those jobs won't
be $300,000-a-year positions?
And teachers, who Christie famously called "political
thugs," are still on his hit list, though so far, his education agenda has
been stalled. He's trying to get
rid of teacher tenure, making it easier to fire teachers and cut down on
state aid for public schools, as well as push charter schools.
One teacher, however, has taken her fight to another level—Marie
Corfield, the teacher in the famous YouTube
video sparring with Christie over his education policies, just won a
Democratic primary for a state assembly seat. Should she win, she'll have a lot
more opportunities to fight Christie's attacks on teachers.
5. Rick Perry, Texas
Everyone knows where Rick Perry was for most of the last year, right? Failing in his attempt to capture the GOP presidential nomination. At least he provided us with some much-needed comic relief.
But a few things he got up to– when he wasn't making headlines with ridiculous
statements – flew somewhat under the national media's radar.
While Virginia, and the pro-choice movement, exploded in outrage over a law
that would have required women to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound before they
could get an abortion, Texas' similar law, passed months earlier attracted
almost no national attention.
That wasn't enough for Perry, though—he had to eliminate funding for Planned
Parenthood from the state's Medicaid Women's Health program. In response, his Facebook
page was inundated with women asking Governor “Goodhair” for the medical
advice they would no longer be able to receive at Planned Parenthood.
Not satisfied with cutting funding for Planned Parenthood, Perry demanded
10 percent budget cuts from state agencies—even though tax revenues are up
$1.6 billion because of high energy prices and some economic improvement.
Last year, Perry slashed $4
billion from schools, and protests
against continued education cuts are ongoing. A Texas schoolteacher told
AlterNet that after budget cuts, more kids are being squeezed into
classrooms: “Pre-K is up to 26 now that they can have in a classroom, it went up
from 22. It's a different ratio for different grade levels. It's 30-something
for high school, it's approaching 30 at the elementary level, which is
ridiculous. It's ridiculous to be expected to teach that many little
people.”
4. John Kasich, Ohio
Governor Kasich took a big hit when voters decisively overturned his
signature piece of legislation, an anti-public-union bill even nastier than
Scott Walker's, by 313,000 more votes than the governor himself had gotten the
year before. And now there are investigations
underway into whether he's misused his power to consolidate control over his
state's Republican party.
But what else has Kasich been up to?
He also backed
down on a contentious voter suppression law that would have narrowed early
voting and made it harder for voters to get absentee ballots, signing a repeal
of the law in an attempt to prevent it becoming a ballot measure that could
drive progressive voters in November.
But Kasich's managed to sign several restrictive anti-abortion laws,
including one that would ban
abortion coverage by state healthcare plans that Obama's healthcare reform
law requires. The insurance plans don't exist yet, but it was apparently very
important to make sure they don't cover abortion—and the ACLU calls the move
unconstitutional. Kasich also, last summer, signed a late-term
abortion ban into law.
And he's looking forward to a new law that would allow fracking in Ohio—one
that might be the nation's
worst. EcoWatch
said of the law, “SB 315 will allow health and safety loopholes. It requires the
gas industry to pay less than almost any other state in the country, exposing
our communities to the worst excesses of the fracking industry. Doctors will be
prevented from talking openly about the sickness they see in their patients, and
the gas industry will keep profits flowing out of our communities.”
3. Rick Snyder, Michigan
Rick Snyder may be facing his own recall election—or at least, a group
of determined voters who'd like to challenge the Michigan governor. Perhaps
that's why he's allowed
a tiny increase in the state's education budget this year. But there's a
catch: those budget increases are tied to
performance.
Snyder is best known for his state's “emergency manager” law, which grants
him the power to appoint a manager over towns he deems in need of an overhaul.
Revamped under Snyder, the
law gives the managers unilateral authority to fire officials, close
schools, void union contracts (an apparent violation of the Constitution's
Contracts Clause), and hand schools over to private charter companies.
He's still defending
the law—and almost brought it to bear on Detroit. (The city's public school
system has been under emergency management for a while, but not the city
itself.)
He also signed a “partial-birth abortion” ban (duplicating
the federal ban already on the books) just in case he wasn't keeping up his
anti-choice creds as well as his neighbors.
Finally, while taking credit for the state's rise in personal incomes,
Snyder's hacked the Earned Income Tax Credit for poor families, a move that will
cost them an average of $700 a year. At the same time, corporate income taxes
will drop by 83 percent. “Unless we restore the EITC, Michigan will soon tax the
working poor deeper into poverty, instead of helping families climb into the
middle-class,” Karen Holcomb-Merrill, policy director of the Michigan League for
Human Services, told the Oakland
Press.
2. Scott Walker, Wisconsin
We know you're sick of hearing about Scott Walker. Yes, he won his recall
election and gets to stay in power—though it appears he won't have the state
senate to do his bidding anymore, if election results in Racine hold.
So we'll make this short and just remind you that Walker may be in the news a
lot more soon, if the John Doe investigation that's been underway in Wisconsin
for a while is actually targeting the governor. He's been siphoning campaign
money into a legal defense fund for the past seven weeks.
Something
tells us we haven't heard the last of this. Nor of the movement that rose up
in resistance to Walker's anti-union bill in the first place.
1. Rick Scott, Florida
Governor Scott, who reigns over the state synonymous with voter suppression
and rigged elections in the minds of many Americans, is doing his best to live
up to Florida tradition.
AlterNet's Steven Rosenfeld explained:
Progressive voting rights groups and even county election supervisors from Scott’s own party are saying the businessman-turned-governor’s latest gambit—claiming there are as many as 182,000 non-citizens among the state’s 11.2 million registered voters and having his appointed Secretary of State send out an initial list of 2,600 names to be purged—has crossed a line in the Florida sand, topping previous voter suppression efforts, and may violate two federal voting right laws.
The Justice Department told Scott to stop purging voters, and several voters
have been reinstated, but the GOP has no plans to actually give up its purge --
Steve Rosenfeld reports that
Florida is making all sorts of bizarre accusations against DoJ officials who are
simply trying to uphold the law.
And while many states and municipalities refuse to require that companies
which receive tax subsidies pay a decent wage, Scott and his friends in the
Florida state legislature have gone one better and actually inserted language
into a tax-break package that
would “require businesses that receive the tax credits to certify that they
do not employ union workers.”
Democrats said the anti-union portion of the bill was unconstitutional; in
reply, the bill's sponsor said, “Yeah, there may be a judge somewhere who
disagrees about whether or not it’s constitutional. So you’re just going to let
some judge who might call it on you later on stop you from helping Floridians in
some way?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sarah Jaffe is an associate editor at AlterNet, a
rabblerouser and frequent Twitterer.
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