By Ben Pangelinan
For Variety

LIKE everyone on the island, I was waiting with baited breath for the governor’s State of the Island Address. Okay, maybe not everyone, but I still woke up, brushed my teeth, polished my shoes and dusted off the suit to look nice for the cameras. If I ever become governor, I am changing the dress code. You still have to brush your teeth and wash your zories, but we are doing away with suit folks.
Seriously, I do eagerly look forward to these addresses to see who shows up. No, I am not referring to the cabinet members yet to be named in the audience or special guests of the person delivering the address that has become so fashionable these days, but rather which Governor shows up.
Is it the politician governor or the leader governor? The politician governor is the governor who touts, among other things, that he has improved emergency response time and made sure our people received the medical attention they need when every second counts. The leader governor is the governor who says we have done much, but we have more to do when only one doctor who is not even certified to attend to emergency/trauma situations would staff the Guam Memorial Hospital’s Emergency Room, yesterday.
I always expect a certain amount of disconnect from reality by the governor in these speeches. Rose-colored glasses if you will. While a politician governor will only paint you the rosy picture, the leader governor will tell you how he will bring that picture to life.
The politician governor will tell us we need to tighten our belts, reduce our travel, and make sacrifices, while quietly hiring over 100 new people in unclassified positions and instituting pay raises for political hires. The leader governor will immediately set an example and freeze new hiring in his office, even cut back salaries to demonstrate his commitment to his own program of austerity.
The politician governor will use every excuse available to explain why he could not do things and why problems still exist. My hands are tied, you took away my control, and we are still recovering from the past administration. This last one only works in the first term and he’s quickly learned that he cannot use it in a second term. The deficit grew from $200 million when I took office to over $500 million in four years, but I had nothing to do with it. I now need total control over all the money to address it.
The leader governor will identify the problem, offer his sincere attempts at solving them, and a plan of action to fix them. He will not submit a budget that does not reflect the reality of the financial state we’re presently in and then say I have a plan to fix the problems. The budget is his plan, he takes ownership over it. He does not play these types of games.
The politician governor will say that what we sow today, our children will reap tomorrow, yet he will sow hundreds of millions of dollars of debt and have our children only find crushing debt that will rob their future to reap.
The leader governor will say no mas, roll up his sleeves and get to work.
Which governor do you think showed up and delivered that speech yesterday?