GOVT 327 Discussion 3
Imagine you are the governor of Virginia and your bureaucracy is issuing new laws and regulations without proper authority. How would you rein that in? For this Discussion, imagine that you are the governor of Virginia, you are the chief executive of this state and the entire bureaucracy falls under your authority. Although you did not directly make the decision, one of your departments is issuing rules outside of a law’s intent because they have a better understanding of the issue than those who wrote the law. They argue that it still falls within the intent of the law. Voters are not happy because they have felt the harm of these new rules and none of the benefit. The legislators aren’t happy and believe you are outside of your constitutional authority. And all of the blame falls on your shoulders. What do you do? Identify a specific/real state agency. Identify the real stake holders. How can
you ease the problems of perception and Constitutional authorities? Remember when you’re working through this scenario, this business is about relationships— with the voters, the legislators, and the bureaucracy. In your responses, pretend that you are a political advisor to the governor, whose election to the U.S. Senate is coming up in the next year and a half (in Virginia governors only serve one term and then usually seek higher office in the U.S. Senate). What would you tell them?