What was it like being governor of Florida?
About this video
A former governor of Florida describes the job and the role of states under the Constitution. States administer much of government, including healthcare delivery, K-12 and higher education, elections and environmental policy, often partnering with local and federal governments. His story of a constituent's 'varmint in the attic' shows that people care about solving problems, not about which level of government is responsible.
You'll be able to
- list areas where states are responsible for delivering government services.
- explain how state governments partner with local and federal governments.
- explain the governor's view that government's job is service.
Key words
- governor
- The elected head of a state's executive branch.
- jurisdiction
- The area or topics a particular government is responsible for.
- constituent
- A person who lives in the area an official represents.
Transcript
[MUSIC] Coolest job in the world. You're in a position of leadership. At least historically, states seem to be more proactive about trying to solve problems. For whatever reason, it seems like there's more things happen as the executive in state government you have, it's a great leadership job. The role in the Federal Constitution is pretty important because you have the responsibility of at least historically a significant part of the administration of government goes through the states. As such you're responsible. You're held accountable, and you're responsible for the delivery of healthcare services. Certainly K12 education, higher education, elections is another part where there's delegated authority to the states. Historically, environmental policy has been delegated to the states that ebbs and flows over time. I think there's been a trend where the federal government is
taking more and more responsibility across the board, but state governments play a really important role partnering with local governments. In some cases, partnering with the federal government. They're really on the vanguard of many policy decisions, for sure. I'll never forget, I always gave out my email address, so that people could let me have it whenever they had problems, and they did that with great regularity. I had a lady email me like at nine o'clock 9:30 at night on a Sunday night, and she said, Governor, there's a varmint in my attic. I want it out. What are you going to do about it? You're a constitutional expert, you would probably immediately say, that's not really the role of state government to be in charge of animal, whatever the term is. But when you say you want to help people, they don't care what jurisdiction is.
They don't care if it's the federal government's responsibility state or county or local government. They want the varmint out of their attic. I called the city manager of Delray Beach and said, there's a constituent of yours that's got varmint in her attic. What are you going to do about it? Within three hours animal control comes out and they got rid of the raccoon, I think that was stuck up there.
Part of the job at any level of government is to serve. You're not the master of people's lives. The way our government is structured, I think is designed on service, not on telling people how to live their lives or what they should do or what line they should get in. It's when they got a problem, figure out how to solve it.
That was the joyous part of being governor, was figuring out the most creative and effective ways to do that. [MUSIC]
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