While the Billings Gazette has its own report, the Great Falls Tribune gives a somewhat more detailed account of the proposed summit meeting in Billings between Democratic and Republican legislative leadership.
A few things jump out of the report:
1. While Rep. Mike Lange has taken a beating due to Epletive-gate, including baseless rumors (started by whom?) that he might be edged out of leadership, he is exactly right in insisting that the governor be involved in any talks and negotiations.
It is good that Speaker Sales is taking a more prominent role at this point -- listening to him on the final day of the session, one is reminded that the caricature of him painted by Democrats in the blogosphere is just that.
Based on the timing of the collapse of negotiations between Sen. Stapleton and Sen. Cooney on the last day of the session while there were still many hours to work things out, one suspects that Sen. Cooney is not able to make the final deal in the Senate, so why pretend that he is? There is a third person along on this date, so he might as well sit up front with the other two.
2. The expected mind games are going full steam, attempting to plant ideas into Republicans' head that certain of their number are in secret negotiation with the governor. In fact, the governor's comments can only be interpreted as a thinly veiled implication that he is talking to nearly everyone except the leadership:
"I've been speaking to a lot of other folks. ... They're frustrated with their own (Republican) leadership."
Well, maybe, but not because we want them to sign off on everything Senate Democrats propose.
A less confident leadership would feel undermined by their own people if they believed it. After all of the party-line votes that Republicans have held together on, though, it is hard to be terribly worried about this kind of smoke and mirrors.
This is especially true since no Republican is going to gain anything politically by undermining his own party at this point. Above all, none of this is personal or nefarious -- Democrats are just playing politics, and we'd be surprised if they didn't. So no need to over-react.
3. Democrats cannot assume that they are going to get to start negotiations where they ended in Helena on the last day of the session. Republicans had essentially, as we have written before, given in on all of the spending increases that the Senate wanted -- at least on a one-time basis, and they had long ago agreed to go along with the $400 election-year "check in every pot" nonsense.
The details that should have been worked out (and by all accounts were being worked out) was the extent of the permanent across-the-board property tax relief that Democrats would agree to in return. Since this was the only Republican request, not to come up with it in some form would have been an admission that the Democrats were not interested in compromise. Senator Cooney is too astute and experienced as a legislator not to see this.
An abrupt end to the session makes sense only from the standpoint of a plan to play for all the Democratic marbles. Republicans had nothing to gain by not cutting a deal on the last day of the session.
But regardless of who pulled the plug on those final negotiations from the Democratic side, a step is rightly being taken back by the House Republicans on spending proposals, with Lange now going back to talking about significant spending restraints on the proposed corrections and revenue department budget increases, and even in the "present law adjustments" that involve increases for existing programs.
This is exactly right. Republicans had given in on the spending increases, but had done so with the proposal of getting some sort of long-term property tax relief in return. With Senate Democrats refusing to come to an agreement on that, Republicans are now right to go back to their original position of pushing for much-needed spending restraint.
Montanans know a little about horse-trading, and it doesn't mean settling on the price that the seller initially asks for. Once they see that the Democratic idea of compromise was to give nothing on spending and to give nothing on long-term tax relief, Montanans should start to get the picture.
