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5. Gubernatorial-Legislative Relations: Executive Dominance No Longer
- The University Press of Kentucky
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83 5 Gubernatorial-Legislative Relations Executive Dominance No Longer Paul Blanchard Until 1980 Kentucky’s legislative branch was clearly dominated by strong governors. Governors like Wendell Ford and Julian Carroll were able to have virtually all their major legislative proposals passed and to block virtually every bill they opposed. Their budget proposals were routinely passed with little or no change, usually by a unanimous vote. In addition, because of both constitutional and political factors, overriding the governor’s veto was almost impossible. Finally, governors normally handpicked legislative leaders, not only from their own parties but from the opposing party as well. In 1980 this lopsided balance of power began to change. Some of the changes that culminated in the 1980s, however, actually began earlier, during the Louie Nunn administration (1967–1971) and the Carroll administration (1974–1979). Nunn’s election in 1967 produced Kentucky’s first Republican governor since Simeon Willis’s election in 1943. It also prompted the creation of a more effective and longer-lasting leadership for the Democratic majorities in both chambers. Notable examples were House Speaker Julian Carroll and House Majority Leader Terry McBrayer. After serving as lieutenant governor under Wendell Ford, Carroll was fortunate enough to serve five years as governor when Ford was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1974. However, Carroll’s highhandedness as a five-year governor irritated legislators who had tasted independence under Nunn. That and his involvement in a federal corruption investigation prompted creation of the Black Sheep Squadron in the Senate, the first sign of real legislative independence.1 The Black Sheep Squadron was even more influential during the administration of John Y. Brown Jr. Governor Brown, elected in 1979, had little practical experience in the rough-and-tumble world of Kentucky politics and seemed at a loss about how to have his will prevail in the legislative process. For example, he made no attempt to influence the selection of legislative leaders as his predecessors had done. Perhaps more important, significant constitutional changes that were instituted the year Brown was elected had a major impact on executive-legislative relations. Under the so-called 84 State and Local Institutions Kenton Amendment, named after former Speaker William Kenton, legislators for the first time had some control over their schedule during a very limited biennial sixty-day session. Another provision of the Kenton Amendment changed the electoral calendar by providing for legislative elections one year before gubernatorial elections, giving the legislative branch a one-year head start on a newly elected governor. This change proved to be very important (and detrimental) to governors like Martha Layne Collins and Wallace Wilkinson in the 1980s. Besides giving newly elected legislators a head start on a governor who would be elected a year later, the amendment separated legislative and gubernatorial elections. Once they were not on the same ballot, lawmakers and gubernatorial candidates made fewer electoral alliances, and candidates for the House and half the Senate were no longer dependent on help from gubernatorial campaigns.2 Governor Collins was the first governor to face a General Assembly that, by virtue of the new legislative election cycle, effectively had a one-year head start.3 The legislature that met in 1984 was organized and established its leadership and committees in January 1983, more than eleven months before she took office in December of that year. As a result of this and other changes, along with her lack of experience in legislative relations, the 1984 session was very difficult for Governor Collins. Her educationreform proposals, along with the increased revenues to pay for them, were “turned down flatly by the legislature.”4 In fact, the legislature responded to her less-thanskillful leadership by passing what was essentially a legislative budget, a major milestone in the development of legislative independence. Governor Collins’s response to the disastrous 1984 session arguably was one of the most significant developments of the 1980s, both for executive-legislative relations and the education-reform process. Rather than reacting with bitterness or hostility toward a legislature that had caused her to be defeated, if not disgraced, she set about creating positive, working relationships with legislative leaders, particularly those legislators who had developed expertise in educational policy.5 What resulted was unprecedented cooperation between the governor and the legislature that continued throughout much of the last three years of the Collins administration. These cooperative relationships contributed to important education-reform policies that the General Assembly enacted in 1985 and 1986. They focused primarily on...