My colleague Aaron Gould Sheinin of the AJC, who's a good reporter with a very strong tolerance for politically oriented bovine feces, sat through a Thursday morning presentation by Gov. Sonny Perdue to a gathering of department heads and state employees.
Sheinin reported that Perdue told his underlings:
"Finish strong. Finish the drill . . . We have 444 days left to make a difference. And that's why need to make everyday count. . . . I don't want to leave in January 2011 and say, 'Boy, I wish I had done that.'"
Those are admirable sentiments for the governor to express, but the question left hanging unanswered is: Finish what? To finish something implies that you made a start at some point. After nearly seven years in office, Perdue has yet to offer substantive proposals for dealing with any of the major problems confronting the state, such as public education, transportation infrastructure, water resources management, and so on.
I will concede that Perdue did follow through on building more boat docks for bass fishing tournaments as part of his monumental "Go Fish" initiative. He has also appointed a lot of business task forces that, well, held some meetings. But when you look ahead for the next 14 months, the only thing his department heads really need to finish is the updating of their resumes.
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