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Government is dysfunctional.

People's trust in their public institutions depends on their government getting results.

I don't think it's any secret that the public has lost confidence in the state government, and there's a lot of work that needs to be done on issues related to public integrity.

Public policy is a study in imperfection. It involves imperfect people, with imperfect information, facing deeply imperfect choices - so it's not surprising that they're getting imperfect results.

Government, in the last analysis, is organized opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government.

The process for producing public policy in Congress is flawed. The process itself kills policy ideas through the bypassing of the rules and procedural decisions that limit discussion.

Telling the public, 'We'll get to it later,' is inadequate. That's what the federal government does.

Governments are run by people. People can be bad.

You have to have a certain realism that government is a pretty blunt instrument, and without the constant attention of highly qualified people with the right metrics, it will fall into not doing things very well.

Politicians who lack the vision to lead the community on big issues like public transport often hide their inaction by blaming other levels of government when anyone complains.