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.

Where is the Montana press when our Senators need it?

The weekend leading up to Independence Day is not the time to do extensive blogging -- much better things to do both for writers and readers.

But it is interesting to note that there seems to have been little or no attention paid in the Montana press to the role that Sens. Tester and Baucus played in bringing down the recent immigration bill. The Senators themselves weren't shy about taking credit.

Montana Headlines pointed out that it was the amendment by Sens. Baucus and Tester that ended up bringing down the house of cards, and a commenter asked the rhetorical question of how the Montana media would respond. We were interested in that ourselves.

Other than the Flathead Beacon, the matter hasn't been mentioned. Among the major papers, the only other mention of the matter at all has been in the Tribune, which notes our Senators voted against cloture, but nothing else.

Given that the defeat of this legislation was the top story last week in the national media, one would expect the Montana media to take note of the Baucus/Tester press release -- whether to congratulate them, scold them, or to make the case that there was nothing special about our Senators' roles.

But to ignore it completely seems a bit odd. Or maybe our search engines just aren't working right.

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

Image Courtesy of www.old-picture.com

Guided tour of that lodge outside of Helena: Chuck Johnson tells us more details about the dealmaking session between a few Republican House members and executive branch staff, and what led up to it. According to Johnson:

(The governor) thought he negotiated a handshake deal with then-House Majority Leader Michael Lange, R-Billings, in the waning days of the regular session. Lange abandoned the deal after other Republican leaders trashed it. Then Lange attacked Schweitzer in a profanity-laden tirade to fellow House Republicans.

It will be interesting to hear Republican comments on that. Lange is understandably licking his wounds after the session and keeping a low profile, but it would be good to hear his side of that particular story -- Johnson doesn't tell us whether he tried to get Lange's version of whether it was reasonable for the governor to believe that he had a "handshake deal."

As a side note, Republicans had better not eat their own when it comes to Mike Lange. If he is willing to run again for the House, count Montana Headlines in for a vote of support. A review of Montana Headlines archives will show a consistent theme of the utter necessity for rhetorical restraint and discipline on the part of the Republican leadership -- and hence an unequivocal vote of no confidence after the YouTube incident. Such a review will also, however, show a consistent appreciation for Lange's hard work and approval of the discipline and restraint shown by Lange early in the session.

Lange had an impossible task, and he isn't the only guy who might have blown his top under conditions of fatigue and high pressure late in a session like this. If he can win his district, it would make no sense whatsoever not to have his experience as a legislator -- although probably not in leadership -- two years from now.

The title of Johnson's piece talks about the Republican party being "torn," which is probably an overstatement. One hopes that predictions of primary election challenges to the "moderates" doesn't turn out to be the case. We need every Republican we can get, especially ones that have proven that they can win a general election.

Someone else is hoping that Republicans follow a script of waging a civil war, though: "Schweitzer looks for 'a hotly debated battle for the heart and soul of the Montana Republican Party' over the next year."

Speaker Scott Sales is right to identify this and similar statements from Democrats as "trying to incite people."

Anyway, back to that lodge outside of Helena. "They divided into 'pods,' with each group of working on one topic: budget, taxes, school funding and energy."

In the end, Schweitzer was mostly pleased with what the special session did.

Really?

"Llew Jones and John Ward are tough negotiators," he said. "They got more done in a couple of days than the rest of the caucus got done in 85. When you shake hands with Llew Jones and John Ward, there's no question what you've got."

Because of the deal, $30 million in general fund spending requests was chopped from the budget passed by the Senate, including $10 million from the Corrections Department and $4 million from the Revenue Department. The way schools were funded was changed more to the Republicans' liking.

If that's tough negotiating, then Republicans are in real trouble if we ever get into negotiations when we don't have a $1 billion surplus to blow. It is also interesting to note how the numbers keep dropping. The first report was that the budget went down from $7.9 billion to $7.85 billion, or $50 million. Later reports cited a $40 million reduction. Now we are down to a $30 million reduction in general fund spending. That is a decrease of less than 1% in general fund spending, or 0.4% in the context of of a $7.9 billion dollar budget.

It is hard not to worry that it will be down to $20 million by next week.

To use the analogy of dickering over the price of a $30,000 car, 0.4% would be a savings of $120 dollars. Tough negotiating indeed. The very phrase "chopped from the budget" by Johnson is misleading, to be generous. "Lightly scuffed off the surface of the budget" is more like it.

Johnson says that Speaker Scott Sales "believes Schweitzer's staff snookered the Republican moderates at Ward's lodge. Schweitzer got virtually everything he wanted, he said, while Republicans would up with scraps."

At least one of the "moderates" involved in the deal doesn't have a view that is much different:

Asked if he was satisfied, (Rep. John) Ward said, "Satisfied is way too strong. It was time to be done. Some good things, from my perspective, came out of it. Obviously, I believe the governor got a lot more. He had two (the governor's office and the Senate) of the three power centers."

This is more like it. There was certainly a case to be made (whether one agrees with it or not) for just giving the executive what it wanted and being done with the session, since it was clear that real compromise wasn't going to happen. And Ward is to be commended for being straightforward in describing what happened as such.

It is also interesting that Ward describes the state Senate as being a power center that belongs to the governor. It is not, unfortunately, an inaccurate description, and that perhaps is the real story of this session.

Montana's Senators oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants: Holding their metaphorical fingers to the Montana political wind, both Senator Baucus and Senator Tester appear to be poised to vote against the grand "comprehensive immigration reform" bill.

Sen. Tester gave a reasonably clear statement through a spokesman:

"He does not support amnesty. He believes that we need to strengthen our ports and borders, that folks that want to come to this country need to get in line no different than his ancestors did, and we need to crack down on employers who are knowingly hiring illegals."

Sen. Baucus had a similarly clear response -- with the usual, and reasonable, caveat that he hasn't seen the legislation -- he shouldn't feel bad, neither has anyone else:

"But I will not support any legislation that does not include strong border enforcement for both the northern and southern borders," Baucus said in a prepared statement. "I do not support amnesty for illegal aliens, and any immigrant who wants to become a citizen must pay back taxes, learn English, and go to the back of the line." (Our emphases)

While progressives/liberals are perceived as surging in Montana, it is gratifying to hear our Democratic Senators, for now, using talking points about this immigration bill that could have been published in American Conservative -- they must know something about the Montana electorate's opinions on this subject.

For Baucus in particular, such a clear statement is telling, since it puts him at odds both with his K-Street corporate donors and with the amnesty-friendly progressive mainstream. We suspect that he's reading Montana voters quite correctly.

Likewise indicating his understanding of the views of most Montanans is Baucus's vote, joining Republicans, against requiring the Army Corps of Engineers to factor in global warming into all project analyses.

It is the last two years of Baucus's term, so he'll be voting with Republicans a lot.

Whiskey's for drinking, water's for fighting: Ya just gotta love a good water war out here in sagebrush country. For folks new to the intermountain west, the water war between Montana and Wyoming may seem esoteric, but this is serious business --

Wars have been fought for less.

In its lawsuit, Montana Justice Department attorneys describe the conflict as "a dispute between states of such seriousness that it would amount to 'casus belli' if the states were fully sovereign. Casus belli is defined as an act or circumstance that provokes or justifies war."

The compact, which was endorsed by Congress, constitutes a treaty, Montana argues.

"Violation of a treaty is one of the classic occurrences giving rise to war," the lawsuit said.

The battle will be fought in courtrooms, and the weapons will be thousands of pages of legal documents. And it's likely to stretch on longer than the wars in Vietnam or Iraq. Some interstate water disputes remain unsettled for decades.

Settle back with a whiskey (put that water on your vegetable garden) and watch this one -- and find a comfortable chair.

For those who are curious about the historical aspects of western water law, a couple of good books to read while waiting for dispatches from the front in this particular water war are Walter Prescott Webb's The Great Plains and Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert.

Renaming Glacier National Park: The Missoula-based National Environmental Trust is having a contest to rename Glacier National Park. Now we know where Sen. Tester got that line.

As the Daily Interlake editorial points out, Glacier's glaciers have been melting for thousands of years, and that "it is misleading to suggest that... policy changes, no matter how draconian, will 'save' Glacier’s glaciers."

There are good reasons to keep working rationally on decreasing emissions of all kinds into the atmosphere -- a stunt like this isn't, however, one of them.

Closing up shop

Well, the GOP House ousted Mike Lange as Majority Leader prior to adjourning.

Over at MOTTO, Jeff Mangan takes note of the fact that Democratic legislators were left out of the compromise process, and suggests:

The entire democratic caucus should reach out to the moderate republicans in both the Senate and the House, as well as the republican leadership (including Sales and Stapleton) and develop a Legislative package on the tax issues. Provide the cover, develop a tax proposal that looks a bit more like the 3rd floor of the Capital than the 2nd.

We couldn't agree more. The key here is including Sales and Stapleton -- bypassing leadership is a formula for a more fractured legislature than we already have. While Sales is correct that the final budget spends too much, one hopes that everything gets wrapped up peacefully today and that tomorrow this post will be dated.

While Republicans should be grateful for all of Lange's hard work this session, it is clear that it was time for him to move on (and that he is not perhaps the best person to move on to challenge Baucus.) Dennis Himmelberger is a good choice -- moderate in tone, devoted to decorum and proper procedures, and yet not one of the 13 dealmakers. And let's not forget that a "moderate" in the Montana Republican party is pretty conservative.

Let's hope that Lange's supporters see the importance of standing together now as a party, just as the House Republicans who didn't vote for Lange stood with him on many party-line votes during this tough session. Now was the time to make the change, but not before.

There will be interim committee and studies, and possibly future special sessions. Sales and Himmelberger will complement each other in any work that remains or that newly arises.

Beyond that, this vote has a symbolic value as a move toward a realignment of both style and substance in the Montana Republican party. For Sales to be reaffirmed as Speaker and for him to support the change to Himmelberger was key. It's a brand new day.

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.

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.

What's the big news?

Opening today's Billings Gazette and turning to the State and Local section, we saw page 1 graced with an article on CHIP sign-ups, a report on sleep apnea screening, and an article about a death penalty bill that has zero chance of becoming law this session.

"Slow news day," we figured. So we almost flipped past a little piece tucked into a corner of page 4C surrounded by nearly two full pages of ads.

You know, that inconsequential AP story about a meeting between the governor and Republican House Speaker Scott Sales.

Come again? Page 4C?

This is only the second meeting between the governor and a member of the GOP legislative leadership since the start of the legislative session. The outcome of that session is coming down to the question of whether Governor Schweitzer is willing to work with the House GOP leadership. At all.

Now granted, the last time the governor had such a meeting, he told the Speaker that he wasn't "married to any of this" in his budget. And then last week his budget director was ordering department heads not to cooperate with Republicans in any way on amending appropriations bills.

So we suppose that the significance of any meeting between the governor and the Speaker needs to be taken in context. Still, we'd say that this was one of the most important stories of the day, and we wondered why, if not a front cover story, it was not at least on the 1st page of the state and local section.

The answer is perhaps to be found in the fact that Speaker Sales comes off a lot better in this article than does the governor. He sounds more upbeat, more positive, more gracious, and more open-minded. He says nice things about the governor even while making it clear Republicans aren't going to roll over and play dead.

The AP writer could only report one positive thing said by the governor -- namely, that he described the meeting as "cordial." Someone needs to remind the governor that he is the most powerful man in the state and that he and the Democrat-controlled Senate have the ability to cram his budget priorities down the collective throat of the state's Republicans if he wants -- whether it is in the form of one bill, six bills, or twenty bills. Given his position of dominance, he could at least try to act a little more magnanimous.

One can't help wondering if this stark contrast between the tough but gracious Scott Sales and the testy-sounding Schweitzer is why the Gazette editors buried the story.

Other than that one "cordial," the governor sounded like a broken Democratic record, implying that he will only accept his bill that's "stuck in the 'bottom drawer of a dusty old desk."

He also confirms what Montana Headlines has been suspecting for some time: the real Democratic priority is not to be found in the details of a bill. It is rather to try to break the back of this particular Republican leadership team. And in the process, the governor reminds us that Democrats have developed a very annoying habit in recent years. They believe that chanting incantations like "for the sake of the children" should cause all discussion to end:

"I think it (HB 2) will be back in some form," (Governor Schweitzer) said. "It will take a group of moderate Republicans who will put family first."

Right. We keep forgetting that we conservatives hate children and families. That's why we're more likely to have both than any demographic in America.