Coming to terms

Should Rhode Island revert to two-year terms, and force its governor to be proactive on a regular basis?

by Steven Seltz

Lincoln Almond

Governor Lincoln Almond's campaign manager calls it "the great unwritten story of the last four years."

Myrth York's campaign manager says he believes it is "a good thing" -- but not if Lincoln Almond is allowed to enjoy it.

And Bob Healey says it needs to be trashed.

The issue in question is the four-year term for governor in Rhode Island. An amendment to the state constitution in 1992 doubled the length of the term from two years, as it had stood since 1911, to four. And as Almond's time in office comes to a close with another round of elections in November, a question arises that has never been asked in the state before, because never before has a governor here served a four-year term.

The question is, Did the longer term have any impact on Almond's policy-making? In other words, did the governor, safe in the knowledge that he would not have to face any voters for four years, rest on the laurels of job security, waiting until a distant 1998 election to reach out to the state?

For Robert Healey, who is running for Almond's seat on the Cool Moose Party ticket, the answer is obvious: Lincoln Almond has used the longer term to dillydally on the state's most important issues, growing distant from his constituents, and breeding within them an apathy and distrust of their government that can be driven away only with more frequent elections.

Bob Healey

Calling his opposition to the four-year term essentially the "genesis" of his whole political philosophy, Healey says, "The more people get in contact with their government, the more they understand, the less apathetic they are."

Still, the implications of Healey's conception of the problem are not so obvious. While they point to the need for an independent political presence in Rhode Island, they also reveal its shortcomings.

What's more, most politicos in Rhode Island say that the four-year term has been a welcome -- and needed -- change. Ed Morabito, Almond's campaign head, says it has "made an incredible difference in how this administration, and future administrations, will work." Before, he says, "Rhode Island politics was on a roller coaster," with the prospect of a new governor every two years keeping the state in a continual state of hysteria.

Morabito explains that "if things are always dealt with in a highly supercharged environment, people tend to get goofy sometimes." But now, Rhode Island voters (and those politicians scrounging for their approval) need only get goofy every four years, rather than every two.

And then there is Rob Horowitz, York's campaign manager, who says that a four-year term is better than a two-year, at least in theory -- or, more precisely, with his candidate in office. "Under an activist, energetic governor, a four-year term is a good thing," he says. "Under Governor Almond, unfortunately, a four-year term has resulted in him coasting."

NOTING THE EMERGENCE of "a most active governor" on State Street in the last year, Healey agrees that Almond's fresh enthusiasm for the job and responsiveness to constituent concerns amount to little more than "election-year window dressing." And the end result of this, he says, is that Rhode Island loses out on any significant changes. "Giving the people what they need in an election year may be a winning strategy, but it is just that -- a strategy and not an operation plan for the benefit of the state in general," he says.

Certainly, one area where this concern might be legitimately raised is in the governor's handling of Quonset Point.

Plans for the development of the 3000 acres of abandoned Navy yards were proceeding relatively smoothly last year, until Almond revealed his proposal to fill in more than 500 acres of Narragansett Bay. Outraged, Curt Spaulding, director of Save the Bay, blasted the governor in an op-ed piece in the Providence Journal-Bulletin for not inviting his group and other stakeholders to share their views at meetings of the Economic Development Corporation.

"Why is the Rhode Island public being shut out of the decision-making process?" Spaulding asked in October 1997. And, lo and behold, by February 1998, as the year's election began to loom larger, Almond held a public meeting to address stakeholders' concerns, saying that "full public input" was needed for the port's planning.

More curious, as the election looms even larger now, the governor has appointed his main public-relations flack, Eric Cote, as head of communications at the North Kingstown industrial park, in order to keep the project in the public eye.

So did the prospect of answering to a bunch of excluded voters in November prompt Almond's change of heart? Activists who have been working on the situation are not willing to brand the governor as a shameless opportunist hoping to prolong his tenure, as they are perhaps reluctant to risk losing any gains made in the last year.

Indeed, their comments reveal a conciliatory attitude toward Almond not found in Healey's uncompromising words. Barry Schiller, a volunteer lobbyist for the Sierra Club, says that the governor is "sympathetic at heart" on environmental issues and that he "would have responded, regardless of an election year."

Topher Hamblett, Save the Bay's advocacy director, is equally neutral. He asserts that Almond has given environmentalists "a seat at the table in developing Quonset" and that the governor "did ultimately respond to the public's concern.

"Some people would say he's just being political," says Hamblett. "Some would say he's just being responsive."

But despite the charges that Almond has finally roused himself just in time for his reelection campaign, Healey, on a national level, is mostly alone in his call for more frequent elections. In fact, Vermont and New Hampshire are the last two states to hold on to two-year terms for their governors.

In 1987, Madeleine Kunin, then-governor of Vermont, attempted to raise support for a change in the term length, forming an advisory panel to discuss the benefits of a switch. She was not successful, however. And today, Sue Allen, press secretary for Governor Howard Dean, says that there is "no serious movement" to lengthen the terms.

Not that the governor would mind a change. Dean has been in office for seven years now -- "a nice long stint," says Allen. Still, "it's hard to meet campaign promises in two years."

Morabito agrees, which is why he says the benefits of the longer term need to be recognized in Rhode Island. He says that, oftentimes, a governor will step into office and "find out the problems are twice as bad" as he or she thought during the election. Under a two-year system, that administration would have to "immediately get down to the task of reelecting itself" -- and perhaps leave these larger issues untouched.

Phil West, executive director of Common Cause, a group that was very active in pushing through the amendment in 1992, agrees that two years aren't enough. Choosing his words carefully, he says that Almond's staff, in the first year in 1993, "left a lot to be desired." But since then, West says, the administration has "done much better," due to a growth period that would not have been possible had another election been held in 1996.

An administration holding only a two-year lease at the State House, says West, is forced to be "constantly in a fund-raising mode." And this need to "park campaign staff in an administrative mode," as West puts it, comes at the expense of producing a larger plan for the state.

BUT SUCH CONCERNS do not convince Healey. Indeed, he goes further than anyone else in the state at the moment in declaring that four-year terms are inherently bad. Unlike Horowitz, who simply wishes to persuade voters that four-year terms are bad with Lincoln Almond in office, Healey says that anyone -- even himself -- should be subject to frequent elections.

Still, in taking this contrary position, Healey presents himself with something of a Catch-22. It is easy -- and makes a lot of sense -- for a group such as the Cool Moose Party to call for more responsive elected officials. The Cool Moose Party stands somewhat outside the Democrat-Republican two-party power system. Thus, it is an obvious and worthy aim of Healey to attempt to make his voice heard, and to have some indication that the governor and others are listening. An effective way to do this, Healey says, is to return to elections every two years.

Of course, for political gadfly Healey, this position makes perfect sense. But what would be the consequences for a Governor Healey? He asserts that "the fact that a general officer can focus on the office is not an effective argument that would outweigh the need for the people to continually review the activities of their elected officials."

In this case, however, there is likely safety, and reason, to be found in numbers. Only two states cling to the colonial tradition of short terms for their governor. All the others have abandoned the ideal of a closely checked executive in the face of the overwhelming bureaucracy and diversity of tasks a governor must tackle. Governor Healey, like anyone else, would likely find it difficult to implement any effective policy in two years. And so he would be judged at the polls too soon, on an incomplete record.

It is Healey's task, and the rest of the independent political presence in Rhode Island, to somehow make their voices heard within the political machinery that is already in place, because disassembling that machinery might be too great a challenge.