Let me briefly sum up Elise Hu’s story about the sparseness of Governor Perry’s calendar: Either he’s lying about how much he actually works, or he does an awful lot of stuff that he doesn’t want the public to know about.
Gov. Rick Perry’s Democratic opponent, former Houston mayor Bill White, criticized the Republican incumbent in June for “working part time” after his schedule for the first six months of 2010 showed an average of seven hours of state work per week and 38 weekdays with “no state scheduled events.” Perry responded that he simply doesn’t write down much of his work for the state.
By contrast, the Tribune found that Perry’s counterparts in California, New York and Florida do write down what they do. New York Gov. David Paterson’s schedule goes so far as to include drive times between events. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger lists “cigar time” on his schedule. And they make their schedules readily available to the public. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist puts his schedule online every day.
In at least one instance, a comparison of the calendars reveals an apparent inconsistency between the record-keeping of the gubernatorial peers. Crist’s schedule shows five conference calls during the month of May with Perry and other Gulf Coast governors related to the BP oil spill. Perry’s schedule makes no mention of the calls. On one of the days on which Crist’s log shows a phone call with Perry, Perry’s schedule reads “no state scheduled events.”
“Many times the governor was on [the call], [and] many times his staff was on,” says Katherine Cesinger, a Perry spokeswoman. “If the governor didn’t call in, it’s not necessarily on his schedule.”
In other words, it’s a little bit of both. He doesn’t do all that much, and much of what he does do we peons don’t need to know. If you’ve got a better explanation than that, I’d love to hear it. Be sure also to check the Interactive Governor Schedule Comparison so you can see just how pathetically Perry stacks up against other big-state executives. Nicely done, Trib.