My way, and that’s an order

When it comes to governing by executive order, I'm not a fan.

So when President Barack Obama issued his order last month giving temporary legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants, I found his method regrettable even if his goal is laudable. Aside from all the raging arguments about its constitutionality and presidential precedents, it strikes me simply as fresh evidence that our political system is no longer functional. It's incapable of tackling major problems, or even acknowledging them.

Concentrated executive authority isn't really a solution. It's a problem of its own. Now, along with a dysfunctional Congress, we have a president that doesn't even follow his own advice on the limits of his authority. And those who like the outcome today won't like it so much tomorrow when someone else holds the pen.

Seems like everybody's got an opinion on this, including Gov. Terry Branstad. He was asked if he would take his own executive action on immigration in Iowa.

'We don't operate that way in Iowa.” Branstad told reporters. 'That's the difference between Washington, D.C., and Iowa. In Iowa, I'm very careful to recognize the separation of powers and to work with the Legislature.”

This is rich beyond words. Branstad saying he has a narrow, restrained view of executive power is like my kids saying they have a narrow, restrained view of Christmas morning.

This is a governor who routinely wields the blindside, line-item veto, striking bipartisan legislative efforts in recent years to fund environmental protection, mental health services and low-income tax relief. This is the governor who shuttered workforce development centers even after lawmakers funded them, and abruptly closed the Toledo juvenile home with no input from legislators.

Branstad has 85 executive orders under his belt, including 16 since retaking office in 2011. His first two actions after being sworn in for a fifth term were executive orders barring every community in Iowa from using project labor agreements on any project that receives a dime of state money and another making sure thousands of felons who finish their sentences will wait years to reclaim the right to vote. Not exactly limited expressions of executive power.

He also signed Executive Order 80, which sets up 'stakeholder groups” like the one packed with homebuilding interests seeking to scrap a requirement to put topsoil back on building sites. If you've got friends in the governor's office, now you have a process for getting rid of pesky rules you don't like.

But Branstad's sudden preference for limited power may be no accident, coming just as thousands of Iowans, including conservative eminent domain opponents, urge him to use his authority to stop a planned oil pipeline. His office says it's the Iowa Utilities Board that must make the call. The governor who once fired off an executive order to stop state regulators from banning lead shot for hunting doves is now flying for regulatory cover on the pipeline issue.

That's the beauty of separation of powers. You can separate powers into the times when the politics looks good, and the times when it doesn't.

' Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@thegazette.com.