As he approaches the midway point of his second term, Gov. Jeb Bush faces the unsettling reality that most of his tenure is behind him. Since his election in 1998, Bush has been a force for change, demanding improvement in public schools, cutting taxes and slashing the size of state government. His agenda for this year is more modest, but still challenging. He wants to reform Medicaid, campaign finance laws and the state's constitutional amendment process. Bush, 51, met with St. Petersburg Times reporters Steve Bousquet and Joni James on Jan. 9 to talk about his goals for 2004, his continuing zest for change, the upcoming election, privatization and fatherhood. The interview was held in Bush's small office annex, where the workaholic governor spends much of his time, talking on the phone, reading e-mail and conferring with staff, sometimes at the same time. Here are excerpts:
What's on your agenda that you haven't accomplished?
I'd like to see serious discussion about the health care insurance system. I think it's an increasingly difficult issue, and it's a place where people are getting very anxious for good reason. The thinness of the market for insurance is of concern. Health care inflation is just out of control. It has a big impact on our own budget, but it has an impact on Florida families' budgets.
The initiative and referendum process. There's real interest in the Legislature to act on some meaningful reforms, and we have been participating in conversations with them and outside groups. I have a lot of interest in that.
Campaign finance transparency reform. It shouldn't be that hard for us to be able to figure out a way to allow for voters and members of the press, and others, to be able to know who gave what to whom and where that money's going. . . . I look forward to working with (Sen.) Tom Lee on this issue, and with (Rep.) Allan Bense, both of whom have expressed support for real reforms there.
Are there frustrations about this job that weren't frustrating in the first term?
I've got a pretty damn good job, let's face it. I get to hang out with really interesting people. I work with mostly young, very smart, completely committed people. I'm invigorated by the chance to serve. The frustrations exist on the margins, and they exist because things that I'd love to see happen at a speed that they should happen sometimes don't. I'm frustrated by Medicaid . . . I have to admit. It has nothing to do with our administration of it. . . . It grows by 10 percent per annum. We start the year - without any change in a service, and without any change in the trend line for the people who are qualified to receive it - a billion dollars in federal and state money in the hole.
What can you do as governor?
I'd like to be able to create a new (health care) system. A system that doesn't grow by 12 percent per annum. You do it by focusing on prevention more. You do it by some simple things that the St. Pete Times health care benefit package has, like copayments. You do it by rewarding beneficiaries that buy generic drugs rather than the costlier prescription drugs. You do it by really focusing on fraud. . . . You have to do it by a (federal) waiver. The existing system doesn't yield the climate where you can extract the kind of costs that managed care companies have done in private plans.
This is an election year. How is that going to complicate what you try to get done?
I don't think it will have much of an impact, to be honest with you. Actually, I think this will be a pretty good year, not because of the president's re-election efforts, but because a lot of the other members of the Legislature are running. So they know people will be watching them. And there's been a surge of money - money for the government. I've noticed that when your cup is running over, it's a little bit easier to reach compromises than when the cup's about a tenth full.
Your philosophy about limited government: How did that evolve?
I don't know, a lot of people. I guess I believed all those Lincoln Day speeches, you know? I just don't think government, as a matter of course, should grow faster than people's ability to pay for it. Tonight, when Florida families gather around the kitchen table - and Friday night is budget day for a lot of people, because they get their check, they live within their means. They have no other option. We should strive to do the same thing, and all the pressures up here are the opposite. So I kind of view my role as governor as, "But for me, who?" on this subject. There's not a lobbyist that represents the Committee for Limited Government. I've never met the person around here that has that lucrative contract. The system is geared toward spending money. That's what this whole process is about. On the fourth floor (of the state Capitol) when the session starts, everybody up there is either seeking money or trying to create a sanctuary for regulation or tear down a sanctuary so that money can be made.
Can you talk about how your view of limited government dovetails with your belief in the private sector taking over a lot of government functions?
I would hope that the hallmark of my tenure up here would be based on limiting government and having a zeal for reform, and thirdly, I guess, using best practices to serve people. I would look at any outsource opportunity, if we could extract monies from the delivery of the service so that we could spend it on the people that we're serving, and we do that every day. We've done a lot of it. We've probably done more of it than all but a handful of states, my guess is.
Can you give an example of where you think that has been incredibly effective?
It's been very reasonably effective in Aramark, for example, with the Corrections Department. It's not the core function of the Department of Corrections to provide food for the inmates. It's to maintain the prisons for 77,000 inmates. If someone can do it better, then why not see if they can? And in this case they saved, in the first year, seven-and-a-half million dollars, and corrections officers that were assigned to the mess halls now are working in corrections responsibilities.
Is there any part of government that shouldn't be privatized?
Corrections officers.
Anything else?
I think police functions, in general, would be the first thing to be careful about outsourcing or privatizing. This office. Offices of elected officials . . . If we can find a better way to send out payroll, handle purchasing, get licenses renewed online, provide medical services in public institutions . . . and we can save money and add value to services, I will look at it, and we have, and I think the taxpayers and the people in this state have benefited, by and large. Is it perfect? No. But I don't think we perfectly deliver services through the public sector, either, last time I checked. Read the headlines of your newspapers every day.
When you were the commerce secretary (1987-88) did you want to privatize?
Yes, I wanted to privatize the department. . . . It happened after I left. But the initial thoughts were developed while I was there.
In your second inaugural speech, you spoke from the heart about being a better husband and father. How's that going?
It's okay. I have a great relationship with my wife. The job actually allows me to spend more time with my wife, because I organize it that way, than it did prior to me being governor. And I love her dearly, and I work on telling her that more often. And my kids, just this last year I've had the chance to spend more time with them, both my boys and Noelle, and I communicate with them. I always have been pretty good at that, but I communicate even more. So it's going all right. And I like spending time with my parents. My dad is going to be celebrating his 80th birthday, and he's getting to an age where I don't want to miss any opportunities to be with him.
Can you think of a mistake you've made as governor that you've learned from?
The A-plus Plan, One Florida, Service First (the governor's first-term initiatives that began the grading of public schools, ended affirmative action in college admissions and overhauled the state's civil service), all of which were, to me, the reasons why I came up here, were big deals for the system. The scope of the idea and the speed by which the idea was submitted and approved was unnatural for the Tallahassee process. I didn't realize it at the time, because I'm not from up here, you know? I mean, it's not such a big idea back home. Big ideas and big things happen all the time in St. Petersburg and Miami, but state government is different, and I didn't understand that to the extent that I do now. And that may have bruised some feelings. But having said that, I don't know what I would have done differently, because sometimes with big ideas, you've got to go all out to get them done. A big idea compromised to a little idea is a little idea.
Did your naivete help?
Probably, but we probably paid a price on a lot of little things around here. Things that aren't as significant but are important. And the convergence of the focus on the new agenda isn't as oriented towards major systemic change, (which) has allowed me to kind of slow the pace down a little bit and work with the Legislature and . . . hopefully develop a more cordial relationship with everybody.
What has been one of your biggest successes?
Biggest success is the fact that Florida has gone from the back of the pack to the middle of the pack in achievement in learning, in student achievement. It's irrefutable and undeniable. And I happen to believe the reason for that is we focused our efforts on the fundamentals. We have a system now that has to, by definition, reward (success). You have to focus on the remedial reader and the struggling math student and rising tides have lifted most of the boats around here.
It's very impressive how the principals and teachers have responded to a dramatic change in our system. The most meaningful reforms in this country took place in 1999, the implementation has been a real struggle. And the whole tone of public education has changed where now the opposition to those ideas was pretty fierce in '99. They all focused on different things. I think that's a real success.
To build on it now we need to look at - those successes are greater in the earlier ages. The question is for the A-plus Plan to be a historic success, something that historians will look back on and say "Wow this is really, there is a change here," and look at the difference in rising student achievement, would be to - as fourth and fifth graders become seventh graders and eighth graders, and then ninth graders and eventually 12th graders - that we'll see rising achievement (that happened) in the earlier grades are happening in middle school and high school. One way to do that is to focus on reading in middle school.
Three years ago I asked, give me the number of reading teachers in middle school in Florida, and you could almost count them on your hand. One or two, that's it. Now our hope is to have a reading specialist at every middle school that will coach other teachers about science and research on reading so that we don't have atrophy. So that reading as a course becomes as important as social studies. You are reading for social studies, you are reading for science and the science teacher helps the struggling reader in their courses.
That kind of change . . . the end result will be, we'll see rising student achievement advance in upper grades. Our graduation rate is rising now. The big challenge for the next governor if we're a success is the avalanche of people wanting to go to college and ultimately I think that will be the best measurement of success.
Is the higher ed system and the community college system getting the kind of support it needs, financially?
It could use more. Particularly the community college system. They do phenomenal work for a per-student allocation that is very low. Of the public services that exist that state government participates in funding, the community college system is the one I probably most admire in terms of delivery of something, a service, that is important to the broadest number of people at the lowest possible price. So I have more sympathy for their budget issues than the other parts of the K-20 system to be honest with you.
Yet they also took a big hit last year in the budget.
