Proceedings from the Governor's
Conference
Governor Rick Perry
Governor Perry then addressed the meeting presenting his directions
for the participants. He emphasized his pleasure at the
recipients of the Texas Star Award and recognized the
recipients when he inaugurated the award in November of
1999. Governor Perry stressed three key themes for all
organizations to address: innovation, efficiency and
effectiveness. He asked each to think very openly of what
government, what their agency would look like if it had
not boundaries. He advised that he wanted each
organization to think in terms of what they would need to
produce the idealized situation. He asked them to identify
what rules, what statutes were barriers. He said that the
Legislature’s accountability was an important function
but that each agency must think first of what was their
main function and then identify all barriers that existed
that served to mitigate against or dilute that function.
He advised the audience that the Governor’s Offices
would be working with each organization to enable them to
more fully provide the functions that were their
responsibility. Governor Perry said that while no one
could foresee what the budgetary consequences of the
economic slowdown of 2000 would be that we should use the
1980s as a caution. State government was not prepared to
anticipate budgetary reductions during that decade and
that made the effort more painful. He said that we should
be wise this time and use the coming months to identify
and husband available resources as well as be diligent in
improving organizational creativity and efficiency.
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