Notes From The Floor

Access

The Closet the Media is Assigned to

Reporter on the Floor

Lobbyist in the Balcony

"Back Benchers" share a light moment in the back row of the balcony where the media now must be escorted to enter
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Access to the statehouse and to lawmakers is an issue this session. Normally the House floor might welcome a line of print reporters, photographers and TV cameras. Writers would sit in a neighboring legislator's chair while asking questions in the afternoon or early morning. This year new signs are appearing on doorways to the floor limiting access to the upper and lower house not just for lobbyists but for the media as well.
    While i admit I didn't want to have lobbyists filing in unannounced or TV cameras set up to surprise me when something was breaking and I had no time to think, I am concerned we have now restricted access to legislators generally. We operate in a tight space where, since all but a leadership and committee chairs have no desk or office but the spot we chose on the floor, we have little alternative but to spend most our time behind what are now closed doors.
    It is enough of a problem that Republican Caucuses are closed to the media and public. Democratic Caucuses are and always have been open, but now the media is hard pressed to find us when they have questions since they can not even see the balcony seats from a window to know when we are there.
    Access by lobbyists concerns me less since nearly all green tagged and registered lobbyists are paid and spend the whole day in the statehouse where they have far more access to us than the public.Reporters on the other hand often operate on deadline and are frequently the only access that people in some parts of the state will have to the law makers who represent them.
    While it might not be pleasant to be surprised by a bank of TV cameras, it is our obligation to respond when we are held accountable for a vote or asked to  react to an event that our constituents' lives are affected by. I know no reporter who will not respect a request to give us a minute to collect or thoughts, find more information or otherwise prepare before we respond.
    It is curious to me that the issue of media access first came up on the balcony where I have noted that all the freshmen lawmakers sit. Kren, Crane, Bowers and Thane are all in the back row far from leadership and the Republican Party's media handler. I imagine that to have an entire row freshmen legislators unsupervised and unspun far from watchful eyes might make some  in the party nervous. That row has established itself as a jovial entity: "The Back benchers." They hung a banner on the back wall of the house chambers over their heads this week until the speaker asked them to take it down.

Visiting the Senate

Today is a day to visit the senate. What used to be a longer walk around the glaring white marble of the rotunda, is a short walk between the brown granite and pioneer murals. Still I understand that Senators don't visit the House that often these days. You don't see them in our halls.
    The Senate has 35 members. We have 70. It might be said that they have a tad more experience since many served here before being elected to the Senate. I do not believe any current House members served in the Senate. The Senate is certainly more balanced in idealogy with both moderates and conservatives in Majority Republican leadership. Here now our Republican leadership in the House is all very conservative. It has created tensions and interesting dynamics with the Senate and occasionally with the Governor's office.
    I consider it a rite of passage to have long ago first been grilled by certain members of Senate leadership. It is something which, when I was a citizen visiting the legislature, intimidated and frightened me. As a lobbyist in 2004, working on health care, consumer protection and poverty issues, those visits, though few, were a necessary trail. The longer the conversation or grilling lasted, the better off I knew I was. If silence fell too early in the conversation or you took "no" for an answer, you knew your bill was toast or you knew that the bill you were trying to kill was going to pass.
    Today those long, intense, demanding conversations are some of the more intellectually stimulating and important discussions I have. They are an essential, powerful part of the legislative process.  They let us test ideas and legislation, develop arguments, face potential opposition and humble ourselves.
    I lean back here in my big black chair on the floor of the House and know that this is an odd, foreign world, the legislature. Perhaps the realm of trial law comes close, yet not, because there is more chaos here, far more wonderfully random reminders of the complexities of the world. We are not trained for this. The 105 of us are elected. These are the early days of this year's bills, the point at which they are still organic and slightly fluid. The lives and experiences of real people start to turn into words on paper now, and to keep that text connected to those who will be impacted takes no small amount of will. The potential to turn policy into a game of political expedience is always there. Always to be tested. I hope always to be resisted.

Never Left

So I didn't go home. This happens a lot. The fans whirrr. The sound of the keys echoes. I remember how foreign the formality of this place was at first. Nothing in my life prepared me for all the woodwork, the gold leaf, the orders of business and the structured discourse. We are farmers, ranchers, insurance agents, retired business people, teachers and sometimes ordinary working people. When you first arrive, this place can not help but instill awe.
    Trying to dress in the clothes this building requires is only one part of it. It is a lesson in class which I think those of us from rural places never got. Two earrings, not one. Shoes with heels, the tie for men, jackets for all of us, all the trappings of gender especially. And then there is the hand shaking. I'd never done that before I worked with the legislature. On doors when I ran for office, I learned to reach out and look someone in the eye. It was good. That making flesh to flesh contact that says I am not an image on a TV screen.
    The formality here forces us into civility perhaps. Maybe it is best we do not get too comfortable. In this place we have a very specific task. We are here to do the business of the people of Idaho, not our own business. The formality and foreignness is a reminder, minute to minute that we don't own this, we visit by the graces of those who elect us. This place is other worldly for me in a wonderful way. I leave here and walk past neighbors and constituents longing for my black jeans and single earing. But that will wait. We have at least three months of law making ahead of us.
    Not in Kansas anymore. We pray, pledge allegiance, stand and sit at the gavel. We ask permission to speak and address each other as good lady or good gentleman.

Ready or Not

This will be my forth session serving in the Idaho legislature. Each year I've spent the night before it starts with more and more to contemplate and worry about. This year I have more than 10 pieces of legislation I am hoping to pass or at least see introduced by a committee in printed bill form. Of course that's way too many pieces of legislation for one person, especially a Democrat in a Republican majority and I know it. But as much of an optimist as I am, I know the fate of some of these bills.      

     Three of these have a good chance this year because I've worked very hard to gain expertise on the issues and have good potential co-sponsors. In those cases I am addressing problems which a majority of legislators agree need solving -- regardless of what party we belong to.
    In a case or two this year I have a solution to something that many of my colleagues will probably not feel is a problem.
    In one case I think a majority of my colleagues would agree there is a problem but most are afraid of what their constituents will think and so will need a great deal of assurance before I have a chance of seeing this legislation become law.
    There is one draft in my stack of dull looking black and white pages which is a great solution which almost all agree is sound and necessary policy but which we may never get to vote on because House leadership may decide to apply force or obstruction to prevent its passage. That is the hard stuff, good policy tied up in power struggles or partisan politics.
    I have two drafts this year which address technical problems, and honestly I don't know if I've found the solution but I'm trying and my colleagues will give me feedback and I'll work on it more and we'll get it right so it works eventually and then maybe next year we'll pass it into law. 
    Finally there are two proposals which are not mine. They are going to be set out as solutions to problems I agree exist. Unfortunately they both do more to shift burdens and harm teachers and small business taxpayers than they actually help them. I will be fighting these. One I helped stop last year and the other is new.    

     So we'll see how it goes. Tonight I'm fretting about co-sponsors and surprised at how calmly I'm debating the potential fate of what I've spent this last year struggling to make worthy of Idaho law.      

    Passage of some of these bills will affect thousands of lives, some will impact over a million people in ways they may feel every day. Without some of this legislation hard working people will lose their jobs, and farmlands will be buried under subdivisions; men will sit more years in prison even though drug treatment is what they really need to become constructive members of society.

I remember: What we as legislators write and pass into law, we sentence Idahoans to live with (or without) daily until others repeal our folly or the courts strike it down. I ask, every day of the session, may we think carefully where all the burdens fall.

19 out of 70

Big frames in the halls of the House and Senate hold photos of law makers since the legislature began. All but the most recent of those photos are in storage. In last year's photo, (I'm the dork who wore neon green on picture day) mine is one of 19 Democrat's faces in a very, very Republican sea of eyes. Of course looking at the photos you can't tell us apart.
    For a decade before I was elected, I was a volunteer for non-profit organizations. I talked to legislators about human rights, tax policy, health care, consumer protection and gay and lesbian issues. Hard issues. I rarely saw anything I worked for get printed by a committee, much less passed into law.
    In my 30s I spent a lot of time angry with law makers who disagreed with me on the issues that affected my life. The year before I ran for the legislature, Jerry Sweet, one of the most anti-gay law makers in the statehouse became one of my best allies on a health care bill I was working to pass for the Idaho Community Action Network.
    It hit me there under the photos outside the Senate Local Government Committee how we humans are pretty multi-faceted. To make it all work we have to remember what we agree on and have in common. We can't take each other's stands on legislation personally. With one or maybe two exceptions I genuinely believe that each one of my colleagues is a good person trying to do what's best for their constituents within the framework of beliefs that they hold. We may debate heatedly on an issue one minute but the next minute on the floor we might have to be allies on a different bill -- one which won't pass without us working together.
    Politics are not as simple as Democrat and Republican or conservative and progressive. Over the past few years Lenore Barrett and I occasionally voted together against the Rev & Tax committee on small business issues. That was a beautiful thing. ...and it works because we know not to spend time dwelling on how we feel about wolves or whether people should own automatic rifles.

Before It Begins

    The old Ada County Courthouse sits across the street from the Idaho Capitol Building. This evening, as snow begins to fly, the historic marble and columns wait under construction, and, in what we now call the "Capitol Annex" (our temporary statehouse,) 70 new House desks and 35 well worn Senate desks wait to be filled with lawmakers from the state's 35 legislative districts.

     My seat will be somewhere upstairs in the new balcony of the House chambers. This year I'll sit with a very smart and hard working crew of six Democrats and 14 as yet unassigned Republicans.

     Where we sit to make Idaho law does matter. It allows us either to see or be seen by our colleagues while we debate, speaking into one of thin, black microphones that reach up from every pair of desks to the high ceiling. It lets us whisper to a neighbor we hope to persuade or ask questions of a seasoned friend. It lets us plot or joke to make the difficult days go more quickly. It lets us solve problems, hatch ideas and improve state law through reasoned discourse.

     On Monday when the 2008 legislature convenes, we will repeat the chair choosing ceremony which usually follows an election. Choosing one by one in order of our seniority, 70 House desks will fill and we will be assembled and ready to begin at least three months of inventing, repealing and hopefully doing no serious damage to Idaho law.