Here in Texas, the lieutenant governor is more important and powerful than the governor, in many respects.
To use a crude analogy, in Texas, the governor is like the President in a country with a parliamentary system, while the lieutenant governor is like the Prime Minister.
Thank you very much astorian. Great point. I agree with you.
The Lieutenant Governor position in the state of Texas is an excellent example of a working position, worthy of a salary. He/she has been given authority and respect by the state constitution, duties that are given to the President of the Senate in California. When working in Austin, I saw the lieutenant governor at almost every legislative session. In Sacramento, the lieutenant governor gets summoned when needed…or when he is meeting a colleague for lunch.
In Washington a few years ago we had a guy who changed his legal name to Absolutely Nobody and ran for the office in an attempt to draw attention to the positions total lack of value vs dollars spent on it.
I voted for him, I don’t disagree with the idea that the second in command should be some kind of elected official but I do disagree with just having a position that does next to nothing other than draw pay for it all day.
A country or a battleship needs to have a clear second-in-command who is ready to step into the top spot on a moment’s notice and not have anyone dispute his authority. But a state? Most states could survive with a caretaker chief executive for a week or two while a new governor is chosen.
If you don’t want to have a special election to chose a new governor then I think the best solution is to make some other important elected office holder like the Secretary of State or Attorney General the designated next in line. Or do like Texas and make the President of the Senate a real office chosen by state-wide election.
I don’t believe this is correct.
He is not old enough to be collecting any pension he may have earned yet.
To me money is not relevent. I do realize in the big scheme of things the salary isn’t much, but even a dollar is pointless, especially if the duties are slim and the money could be spent on better things.
A lot of governmental positions and agencies and even workers and policies were established years ago and they are so entrenched they will never be given up.
In the old days when you had a huge state like California and communication was limited a Lt Gov makes sense. It also makes sense to put your state capital in the center of the state. But today you may not need this.
For example I worked at a company with headquarters in NYC. They required the GM of each hotel they owned, to fly in once a month for a meeting. They compnay flew the GMs first class. To me that was a ridiculous waste of money.
The company said “No raises this year we’re too broke,” yet for example, we had eight hotels in Chicago. That’s eight GMs flying 12 round trips to NYC, first class. Why? So they can have a meeting? They could’ve done that by conference call or video conference.
So why don’t they do away with it. The people that make this call to have the meeting are all former GMs. It’s not needed but it’s a perk to fly to NYC.
Everytime the board said something about cost savings the GMs rallied to save their “meetings to NYC”
This is the same way, positions that once may have served a purpose, now don’t. But they can’t be done away with because no one in power wants to eliminate a perk because there perks will be next.
It’s much easier to see the wast of a Lt Gov who does nothing than of the Governor who has 100 other perks, hidden by passing them off as “true expenses.”
So if the question to get rid of a Lt Gov comes up, the Governor won’t support it, because it suits his purpose, which is, “if people are worried about expenses they go after the obvious first.”