Jon Ralston is befuddled by Gibbons’ ‘decisionary process’

By Jon Ralston (contact)

Friday, Dec. 7, 2007 | 7:27 a.m.

Perhaps I have been too hard on Gov. Jim Gibbons, who seems to have no plan, or an ever-malleable one, for the coming budget cuts. Perhaps I have not given him enough credit for having a good reason to keep his agency budget-gutting suggestions so out of public view. And perhaps I have not fully understood why his bag of cliches about taxing and spending is so needed to reassure the populace during this difficult time.

Until he sat for an extensive interview this week with my colleague Jeff Gillan of "NewsONE at 9," I didn't think Gibbons even had a political philosophy beyond vacuous sound bites. How wrong I was - I now know what kind of thoughtful formulation the governor is using because he provided a glimpse behind the curtain.

"What we've gone through is kind of a decisionary process," Gibbons told Gillan. Many of you may not understand what a "decisionary process" is, its absence from the English language being a slight impediment to comprehension.

But this clever use of jabberwocky, this governor's unwitting and onomatopoetic description of his outlook, could be quite illuminating. Is that a combination of "decision" and "reactionary"? Or is this the governor's version of George W. Bush's "decider" coinage, signaling that the $285 �million in cuts stops at Gibbons' desk?

The Gillan interview provided a rare tour of the governor's mind, like taking a trip to a mental Everglades. Consider the muddy swamp the governor's interlocutor discovered:

Gibbons once again pointed to other governors who have had to make cuts. But this governor is different, he said, because of his decisionary process. "I'm the first governor who brought all the legislators in, gave them this update," Gibbons said.

Really? The hyperbole can be excused - he never brought in all the legislators or we would have had a special session by now - because most politicians do it. So Gibbons must be referring to his hastily called Summit to Save the State, in which a handful of lawmakers were invited and which occurred three weeks after he dropped the budget-cut bomb at a Cabinet meeting.

The next part of the interview was especially revealing of how state government works these days. Gibbons told Gillan that on the morning of that Cabinet meeting (Oct. 15), his budget director (Andrew Clinger) "walked in and says there's a problem with the budget revenue ... That was the first time I heard we had a problem with our numbers."

Follow this closely, folks: Shortly after this putative meeting with Clinger, Gibbons went into a Cabinet meeting and presented a detailed spreadsheet with possible cuts along with two other pages outlining a potential action plan, which included deadlines for agency heads to submit reductions, a declaration of a hiring freeze and a list of members of a review panel.

If Gibbons is to be believed, all of this was done in very short order the morning of that meeting. Does that make sense to anyone? Could they have moved with such alacrity on their decisionary process?

Diving further into the darkness, like Tennyson's Crimean War battalion on its death mission, Gillan asked Gibbons to explain his overall philosophy in making the cuts.

The governor responded that he is telling agency heads: "Come back to me with what your priority will be."

This is a philosophy? If so, governor, there is less in heaven and on earth - and in a thimble - than is dreamt of in your philosophy.

When asked about his reluctance to tap the state's rainy-day fund, Gibbons repeated his rote line, "We're only five months out of a legislative session ... Nobody can tell me what emergency we will have ... It's got a cute name of rainy-day fund, but it's an emergency account."

Actually, that's a cute nickname. It's called the Fund to Stabilize Operation of State Government, and state government needs to be stabilized, not decimated.

And what kind of decisionary process produces sophistry about it being only five months out of a session? A crisis is a crisis, no matter when it happens. And if we have so little data, why such large cuts?

Indeed, moments later Gibbons described the situation as "short-term turbulence," all but making the case against himself, a true talent he possesses. He then emptied the cliche bag again by talking about government's living within its means, saying we have a spending problem and mentioning the $1 billion in increased spending without mentioning he signed the budget and made no effort to cut it.

But he will. "I'm here to tell you as governor I am ready to reduce government spending," Billion-Dollar Jim declared.

Can't wait to see that decisionary process.