Civility and the art of legislative maintenance

Mark Sherouse's editorial in the Great Falls Tribune took the recent Wheeler Conference in Helena as a jumping off point for a more general discussion of civility and the need to rediscover it for ourselves in our political discourse.

One of the most interesting tidbits in the article was this:

Perhaps the most hopeful sign of the conference — attended by Republicans and Democrats in about equal numbers — was the civility of the discussion and the evident working relationship now being nurtured by House Speaker Scott Sales and Senate President Mike Cooney.

Hm. That was where the trouble started last time -- Cooney actually taking steps to negotiate with Republican legislators to find areas of compromise. We remember how that ended up. We are impressed that while Cooney got knocked down in the last session by those who didn't like his willingness to negotiate and compromise, he appears to be getting right back up again, and plans actually to talk to and work with Republicans.

The more partisan voices on the left attempted to undercut Speaker Sales's legitimacy by namecalling and ridicule -- it is good to see that Cooney isn't planning to allow himself to be railroaded into ongoing take-no-prisoners partisan warfare. And we look forward to another session with Sales as Speaker.

We don't know how the next election will work out, but one thing is clear -- regardless of who controls which houses of legislature, things will be close. Cooney understands that Democratic control of the Senate may be very short-lived, and that he who fails to work with people while in the majority can't expect those same people to work with him when he finds himself in the minority.

In spite of the legislative districting, Republicans are figuring out how to run in these new, oddly drawn districts, and stand a very good chance of controlling both houses in the next session.

If so, one hopes that Republicans won't take it out on Cooney -- he seems to have dealt pretty straight with us for as long as he was actually in control.

Narrow escape: special legislative session ends

In spite of (or perhaps because of) threats floated by Republicans in the Montana House to pass a fire-fighting funding bill and then adjourn, peaceful agreement was arrived at and the session appears to be over. Notably absent was the kind of take-no-prisoners strong-arming from Democrats that was so prominent during the regular session and during the special session called to finish the final budget this spring.

The real reason for Republican firmness was legislators like Sen. Sam Kitzenberg, who is most widely known because of his opportunistic party-switching after having been given an unadvertised state job by the governor. Kitzenberg wanted to use the session to find other ways to spend money. OK, it was "for the sake of the children," so no-one should have had the audacity to dare oppose Kitzenberg.

Kitzenberg would of course love to have extra education spending credited to him in the Democratic primary. He is campaigning to be the state's educational Grand Poo-bah -- which apparently pays more than does the state job he currently has.

That "for the sake of the children" act begins to wear thin after awhile -- and one suspects that his Democratic primary opponents would have raised a fuss within the party had he used the special session to gain an advantage over them.

Senate President Mike Cooney perhaps knew as much when he joined with Speaker Scott Sales in quashing any ideas of using the special session for anything but funding fire-fighting. It's not that Cooney might not have wanted to spend money, but out-of-control special session spending would have hurt Democrats more than Republicans in the coming legislative elections, so enlightened self-interest likely was at work.

Although Charles Johnson's article equally credits Democratic and Republican leaders for keeping the special session under control, notably absent were Republican plans to spend more money. It was the Democrats who appear to have had more grandiose plans and dreams for the session. In other words, it was the Democratic legislators who needed to be reined in, both on extra spending and on the expansion of powers for the state executive branch.

(Although we Republicans did get blamed for wanting to spend more money in the regular session on fire-fighting rather than on hiring more tax collectors -- silly us with our silly priorities.)

Anyway, it's over, and we can watch our wallets a little less closely -- for the moment, anyway.

Random legislative notes

The House passed a $7.85 billion budget. The Senate version at the end of the regular session was $7.9 billion. Let's hear it for fiscal restraint on the part of the Montana House. Those 13 Republicans ought to hire themselves out as professional car-buyers -- people would probably pay them good money to shave 0.6% off sticker price. (On a $30,000 car or truck, that would save you $180. Now that's compromise. )

The amusing part is that when Scott Sales proposed that the House could go ahead and adjourn, Sen. President Mike Cooney had a fit, threatening not to approve the budget. Let's see -- it is the deal cut by the same governor Cooney obeyed when told to stop working on a compromise with Republicans on the final day of the session, and it only reduces spending by 0.6% from what the Senate passed. And this is a problem for Cooney?

The latest version of the tax bill in the House has what appears to be an interesting compromise: leave out the ongoing property-tax credits, but also leave out all of the extra empire-building powers the DOR was wanting so they could go after taxpayers. (Although we assume that the DOR still got its 90 employees -- so look for them to be coming after us anyway, just to have something to do.)

It also leaves out the renters' tax credit, which never did make sense.

What remains is the $400 election-year "check in every pot" for the governor -- and the Republican's business equipment tax reduction -- the most important proposed tax reduction of the entire session.

This is actually not a bad compromise.

Sunday roundup and branding -- the Gazette, and beyond...

Image Courtesy of www.old-picture.com

(Note: this was as far as things got when the Montana Headlines technical problems began on Sunday, preventing further work -- but it's quite enough.)

Don't mess with Anaconda: The first courageous cautionary words that Montana Headlines noticed occurred right here in the blogosphere way back on May 8, on 4&20 blackbirds .

The sequence of events at the end of the regular legislative session where Democratic legislative negotiating power seemed not to be where it belonged -- in the hands of Senate President Cooney -- was not a good sign.

The fact that Democratic legislators were notably absent at the dealmaking prior to the special session was something else that caused a little eyebrow raising.

Going back further, there was the way that the executive branch seemed clearly to be calling the shots on how Democratic House members voted en bloc against every Republican budgetary proposal involving the "6-pack," even ones that the Democratic members substantively agreed with. This, in spite of the fact that the executive branch has made such a big point of saying that Republican "permanent tax cuts" are a myth, since future legislatures aren't bound by the actions of prior legislatures.

Leaving aside whether the 6-pack was a good idea or whether the House Republican leadership treated the Democratic House leadership with appropriate courtesy in how it was done, this refusal to play (or rather Democratic House members being ordered to refuse to play) was the uniquely Democratic contribution to poisoning the atmosphere in the House -- with the effects of those countless,senseless, and unthinking 11-8 party-line votes still crackling in the House Appropriations Committee during this special session.

Given the fact that the majority of House members in both parties (forget the extremes on both sides) clearly wanted to make the session work, and given the fact that the Democratic-controlled Senate was going to get the last shot at the bills anyway, the fact that Democrats weren't allowed in any way to help shape the House appropriations bills was just plain out-of-character from what we had seen from them. And again, it had a poisoning effect on the process.

These were only the things that made it out into the open.

So Sen. Jesse Laslovich's stern words directed the governor's way were not particularly surprising. It has already been made apparent that this is not an executive branch that was inclined to bring Republicans and Democrats together -- what Republicans have quietly wondered to themselves is whether Democrats might start to tire of having their votes taken for granted.

Senate President Mike Cooney's public statement that he had asked all leaders of both parties (pointedly including the executive branch) not to "throw gasoline on the fire" was a more muted response, but he was no less clear than Laslovich.

As a side-note, much has been made about the 13 GOP Representatives being "traitors" to the GOP -- Montana Headlines has a slightly different view. What we're wondering is whether they stopped to consider what Democratic legislators were going to think about a handful of Republicans cutting a deal directly with the executive branch without involving them, their peers in the House.

GOP Alert GOP Alert: This is not a time for Republicans to pile on and ruthlessly attack the governor. Leaving aside basic issues of civility and propriety, that strategy has already been proven to be a losing one -- dead on arrival. And that it is a losing strategy has been clear practically since his Senate run against Burns in 2000.

Attacking the governor will only cause the Democrats to circle the wagons around the governor (that's what we would do for a Republican governor -- even one who was irritating us,) and that in turn will prevent any lessons from being learned.

Some Democratic legislators are apparently courageous enough (and exasperated enough) to tell the executive branch to tone down the rhetoric and to respect the process of the legislature -- which is fully equal to the executive branch. Republicans need to keep still and just quietly encourage those legislators behind the scenes, and they need to work on restoring across-the-aisle legislative relationships that have taken a beating over the last few months -- and building ones that currently don't exist.

Again, this shouldn't be done in the spirit of undercutting the governor -- he's our governor, too. And we wouldn't be inclined to work with Democrats who were encouraging us to stab a Republican governor in the back -- so why would we expect any different from them?

If we haven't learned anything else in the bitter, vicious, and childish name-calling partisan undercutting of both Clinton and Bush on the national level over the past decade and a half, it should be that it isn't healthy to have leaders who can't do their jobs in a constructive way for as long as they hold the job. The same is true of our office-holders here in Montana who are the recipients of shrill name-calling on a regular basis.

Does anyone stop to think, or even care, about the effect this has on spouses and children who hear and read that stuff? Is it so important to depersonalize and dehumanize our political opponents? Isn't it obvious that this kind of dehumanizing name-calling is done in order to over-ride basic sensibilities of human decency that would keep us from ever, in a lifetime, saying similar things to or about the guy who lives across the street?

But getting back on topic: as has been repeatedly stated on Montana Headlines, we believe that it is the legislative process that is most threatened in America today -- usurped by courts and pushed around by executives, bureaucrats, and NGO's. But we'll say it again: the spirit of Republican support for those Democratic legislators who are saying "enough" to the governor's rhetoric should be one of working together to protect the independence and equality of the legislature.

On this matter, Democrats and Republicans are in it together. Or at least they should be.

Who wasn't at the dealmaking session

We noted that Speaker Sales and Rep. Sinrud weren't at the deal-making session in Helena. Many Democrats gloated about it.

What is interesting to note is that there was a far conspicuous absence at the meeting, per the news reports: Democratic legislators.

If we had any questions about who was behind the Democratic wheel on the last day of the session, this clarifies it as much as is necessary. No wonder Sen. Stapleton was so frustrated that day -- he thought that when he was negotiating with Sen. Cooney, he was talking to the decision-maker. Clearly not.