Well past the halfway point of his term, Edwards
has little to show for his time in office. He said he would put the state on
firm financial footing, but all he did was raise taxes and spend more while failing
to stop chronic budget shortfalls. He made more people eligible for free
government-run health care, but even a report that overestimates
its benefits and underestimates
its costs can’t hide the fact Edwards raised taxes to support an expensive
new entitlement, the benefits of which won’t exceed the costs, for a number of
people who could pay for their own insurance anyway.
His most significant, potentially positive
achievement therefore comes from criminal justice reforms, comprised of a
series of shortening sentences, increasing use of parole and probation, and
instituting administrative changes that had the effect of reducing the jailed
population size. As long as those changes don’t permit more criminal activity
while reducing costs, he can claim policy victory and hang his hat on that for
reelection purposes.
Whether disproportionately higher recidivism, more
successful rehabilitation, and lower costs result from it not enough data has accumulated
to verify that. Anecdotal
evidence, however, gives ammunition to critics who point out the backwards
nature of the effort: rather than investing first to support an infrastructure
that makes the beneficiaries of less jail time less likely to reoffend, Edwards
promoted policy that freed them first and only later promises to pump money
into keeping them out of orange jumpsuits.
To dull the critiques, Edwards and allies of the
effort now seek to fine-tune the changes, and to wit lumped modifications
altogether into Republican state Sen. Dan Claitor’s SB 389.
Among other things, it allows for probation’s extension from three to five
years when violated, makes more certain payment of restitution to victims, and
revises good time credit calculations.
The bill passed out of Senate committee last week,
but not without complaints. Some lawmakers, echoing interest groups that
typically argue for more leniency for criminals, said they needed more time to
study the alterations. The groups themselves feared these would undermine the
reforms from last year, and castigated Edwards for not having them participate
in the negotiations that produced the bill.
For his part, an Edwards spokesman said the
governor knew tweaks would have to come to the package and insisted they had relayed
these to the special interests. But even those working with him on the deal such
as Claitor said the Governor’s Office had done a “terrible job” communicating with
him and those other groups.
But Edwards shouldn’t care if he burns his usual ideological
allies on this issue. In the shadow of a term with far more policy defeats than
victories, he needs to quell criticism of his most saleable achievement to
date. If that takes throwing them overboard, he’ll need to do it.
Yet just as Edwards will need to sideline his ideology
to secure a resumé-building
win, he will have to hope his ideological opponents won’t wish to sabotage the
effort to deny him that. It appears that he has a deal with those who would
make more sweeping changes, such as GOP state Rep. Sherman Mack
whose HB
195 would increase the probation period to five years without strings.
Likely his critics would take some of what they
can get. However, they could gamble for more, in pushing for changes less tepid
than those endorsed by Edwards and, in the best of worlds, force a bill to his
desk with those, daring a veto. That puts them in the position where they can
score a policy win or, failing that, make Edwards look too doctrinaire in favoring
criminals’ rights that further deflates his reelection chances. But if they can’t,
then they lose the opportunity to ameliorate the effects of what they see as
bad law although it keeps alive a valid critique of his policy output.
Thus, whether something like SB 389 makes it into
law depends on how much each side needs a deal and whether they feel dealing
away too much reduces the odds of their preferred future electoral outcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment