Next Tuesday, Lincoln Chafee will be inaugurated as Rhode Island’s 58th governor. What should he do when he takes office? To get some ideas, I asked five of the state’s smartest citizens what advice they would offer the new governor. So far we’ve heard from Tom Sgouros, Mary-Kim Arnold and Justin Katz.

Today’s essay comes from John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, a nonprofit organization which promotes “open, ethical, accountable, effective government.”

If I could give one piece of advice to Gov.-elect Chafee – just one piece of advice – it would be to convince Larry Ellison that Rhode Island is not only a wonderful place for a sailboat race, but also the perfect spot for Oracle to moves its headquarters. Jewelry District, anyone?

That may not be the most useful advice, though, so let me offer something else. I would suggest that when Gov.-elect Chafee makes most of his decisions, he should use a 25-year time horizon.

Why 25 years? Because that is the approximate length of a generation in the United States, as measured by the OECD. Using that time horizon, any decisions the governor makes will impact the next generation directly.

This will not be easy advice to heed because our political system is designed with short time horizons, specifically the electoral cycle, in mind. For Gov.-elect Chafee that means 2014, the next time he will have to face the voters. Not so long ago, during Gov. John Chafee’s generation, that meant an even shorter two-year time horizon.

The electoral cycle is short because we insist on accountability through the ballot box. If our leaders had generation-long terms of office we could not send them signals about whether we approve or disapprove of their actions frequently enough. But a four- (and for members of the General Assembly, two-) year electoral cycle creates an incentive for politicians to be shortsighted in their policymaking.

The most notable example of this shortsightedness is the political business cycle, where politicians use fiscal and monetary policy to boost the economy before an election. These responses to electoral incentives offer near-term political benefits at the cost of long-term financial problems.

Gov.-elect Chafee will face two areas of concern to Common Cause Rhode Island where using a 25-year time horizon will serve us well.

The first involves fully implementing separation of powers. That principle was absent from our constitution for over 10 generations, and remains in its infancy since voters added it in 2004. By thinking about he and future governors should use separation of powers, Chafee can help shape the institution of the executive unlike any of his predecessors.

The second area of concern to Common Cause is judicial selection. The outgoing governor publicly expressed indifference to putting people on the bench. But judges often sit for several decades, helping to interpret the policies elected officials work so hard to establish. By making good appointments, and not succumbing to the temptation to trade judgeships for short-term political gains, Gov.-elect Chafee can affect the shape of the law – and his policies – for a generation.

This prescription for good government will not be easy to fill. Many of these choices will be made out of the public eye, and will not gain the future governor votes in four years. However, making the long-term decision at the expense of short-term political gain will eventually pay great dividends, both to the state and to the legacy of the second Governor Chafee. •

(Photo: Common Cause Rhode Island)