WSJ: GOP Governor Pete Ricketts’ Results-Oriented Leadership Gets Results For Nebraska

In Nebraska, GOP Governor Pete Ricketts’ results-oriented leadership is getting real results. A new Wall Street Journal profile of the governor describes his commitment to bringing successful ideas from other states to Nebraska to improve the lives of his constituents. As a result, Governor Ricketts has succeeded in promoting lower taxes and economic growth, making Nebraska a top state for business. Thanks to Governor Ricketts’ focus on implementing innovative ideas, Nebraska citizens are reaping new rewards.

The Wall Street Journal writes:

“’I’m a big believer in stealing other people’s good ideas,’ Nebraska’s Gov. Pete Ricketts tells me on a visit to Hillsdale College, where I teach. ‘We have 50 states that can implement ideas,’ the 53-year-old Republican adds, and ‘we’ve got a great story to tell about some of the things we’re doing in Nebraska.’

Last year, when raucous protests and vandalism hit an oil pipeline under construction in North Dakota, Mr. Ricketts dispatched state troopers “to figure out what North Dakota learned.” He’s confident Nebraska is prepared to confront any disruption of the Keystone XL pipeline, which cleared its final regulatory hurdle last month. Another idea he’s thinking about stealing involves the opioid epidemic. At last month’s meeting of the Republican Governors Association, Mr. Ricketts learned that Kentucky has limited opioid prescriptions to as little as three days…

Mr. Ricketts says his business experience has served him well in office. He cites ‘Lean Six Sigma,’ a process-improvement methodology he has adapted from Ameritrade. More than 12,000 state employees have trained in it, and the governor’s office issues jargon-filled press releases such as this one: ‘In 2017, agency process improvement coordinators have completed 52 projects, eliminating over 1,300 non-value add steps. This has reduced the lead time for delivery by 9,200 hours.’ To put it in English: Businesses applying for tax credits and nurses seeking license renewals have shorter waits.

Looking ahead, the governor says, ‘we have set ourselves up tremendously for tax relief.’ When commodity prices rebound, so will tax revenues. Mr. Ricketts has supported a plan under which hitting revenue targets would trigger automatic tax cuts. He wants to change the way Nebraska calculates property taxes, borrowing an idea from South Dakota that leaves farmers and ranchers less vulnerable to sharp fluctuations in commodity prices.

Nebraska is already the fourth-best state in the country for doing business, according to recent rankings from Forbes. When Yahoo sought a $20 million expansion to a data center near Omaha last year, it filed an online application for a construction permit. The approval took two days. Mr. Ricketts was pleased—he says it would have taken weeks if not months in California—but he isn’t satisfied: ‘It should be less than two days. It should be a day.’”