Notes From the Floor

Ode to the Senate

O Idaho Senate with your flourishes
Your contemplative strength
How the House has teeth so much sharper

O Senate with your kind men and tough women
You strut as if these endings were your making
Why do you own acts so cruel?

For in your faces lies a sadness, in your eyes aquifers rise
The blood of a million and a half lives hangs around you
Will you listen to its cry?

O Senate your demons are the sly ones
Men with voices more self righteous than mine

My death here will not come from honored stabbing
But from from friendly fire
From cold flesh cut to keep me small

O Senate in your back-hall offices the lobbyists tarry
They covet your small numbers
Your love of fine wine and red meat

Let none come here to lead you into darkness
Your voice is that of orphans
Their quest is yours to represent

As a body of the legislature, Senate you demur to Gwartney and his Governor too often
The scent of moneyed scandals rise and yet you dally
Steel your bones, we've battles yet to fight

Your skin pales at my words, still you compliment my passion
I could stay to study at your gleaming heels
But my tolerance for pain fades with age

Aye, in your finance committee lie secret angels
In your gruff leaders hide impish saints
Faces of stone, you weep when the hero falters

Nay, I'd thought to leave but have grown fond now
Thorn in your steely side, such a view you offer
The space you give, the lines you've begged me learn

Should I miss the house? Yes
I shall wander East and visit
Gaze fondly at their casual dance and return

I'll run here to your pools of formal kindness
The body of thirty-five parts which together spin a brilliant, hard and haunted heart.

Warmth

The calendars are getting full, the issues in committees and on the floor more weighty. Walking the long halls connecting the house and senate, the humor and kindness keeps it all together. We would so fall apart doing the awful things we are, if we all were not so determined to get along, to put every debate, loss and vote in the past and move on. No longer are the freshmen new. No longer is the chamber we serve in strange to any of us. There is a settling. The elections will undo this in part. They always do. It is both good and bad.

Of course I am feeling more loss now in looking at the Senate the way you do look at something you are planning to leave. My caucus feels warmer and the humor seems to find its way into our meetings and passings. We feel more like a whole than we have since I arrived here in the smaller body almost two sessions ago.

Of course all that may be my own sense of the wight lifting. Knowing you can leave something is very freeing. Whether you actually leave or not, it helps.

Gravity

The state Capitol is set up to contain two very separate universes which revolve next to each other, passing material back and forth, the force of each tugging and pulling but both locked here together in the other's gravity.

Each day one committee breaks the division of the two universe model. The 20 of us meet in our early morning conference meeting and we laugh and tease and the great house-senate divide fades a bit to make us all just members of the Joint Committee.

Just yesterday, in spite of arm twisting, the Senate killed the House's hopes of denying state retirees a tiny raise this year from the state PERSI pension fund which has the ability to ensure seniors have enough income to participate in the economy and can afford the cost increases they face over time. We, the Senate, felt we did what was best for Seniors and the State's economy allowing the tiny raise. House members did not but still upstairs this morning the jibes were more humor than ire.

One floor down in the committee room, numbers become motions now. We are turning ideas for how to spend money into law. Each budget carries a number in parentheses. Those are the jobs we are removing from the budget. In a few cases they were already vacant positions, placeholders for a person already laid off or a position never re-filled, but the vast majority are real people's jobs, jobs which, as of July, will no longer exist. This is emotional for me, as is learning that we may have already priced people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in medications and that we could vote to do that on a far more grand scale next week, that we may well eliminate mental health treatment or substance abuse programs. I can't make these figures on the pretty colored pages stay as numbers only. It doesn't work for me.

So when our universes collide each morning, it is to me like watching the world of math meet the world of human faces. I see families in crisis facing longer lines and more uncaring government. It is not ok to me. It should not be ok to any of us.

Good Bye

The whole pace of the session just accelerated tenfold.

The divisive and highly political anti-choice, anti-senior and anti-health care bills sailed through hearings this morning and so the legislature is well on its way to inviting constitutional challenges and keeping attorneys busy and well funded once again. We even take up hearings on politicizing state retiree benefits in Commerce Committee tomorrow. Do we help the economy and seniors or do we do what the Idaho Freedom Foundation wants?

We started setting budgets this morning too and in this, the very first day, there was a budget many felt would be harmful to the state, the economy and the people of Idaho if not given more money. While my personal first priority is not to hire bank regulators, I know they are necessary, but compared to a teacher I think I'll fund teachers… I even debated against the motion until Rep. Fred Wood said that not going with the same identical bare bones budgets and the same deep cuts for every agency will unravel the process.

I thought to myself, with the mess we are about to make of the economy what are we trying to defend here? What is there here in these cruel 2011 budgets so beloved that we would not want to unravel it?

All our reserves are gone and we have no stimulus with which to once more protect the state from letting prisoners lose or firing thousands and thousands of teachers and state employees. Who has asked the people of Idaho if they want to have their schools cut this deep? Can we even write budgets that work and balance given that the fist day we already fell off the wagon of austerity worrying about bank regulators. What happens when we get to children or people's lives and health?

I feel this pace accelerating and I long for the playful days of last week when we were wishing our first set of pages good bye, when Bart Davis, Kate Kelly and all of Democratic and Republican leadership stood in a big receiving line to shake hands and wish them all well. 

Everyone laughed each time one of the girls reached up and hugged Bart Davis because he doesn't like to be known as kind or as a softy. They all got hugs out him and a few even got one out of Kate who is no fan of the "touchy feely" either. It was charming and a bit sad since they were a particularly good group. But our new pages are here in their red sweater vests, wandering this giant gleaming place which is so very different from the place it was just a few days ago.

The Wolf Was Framed

Rather than a policy discussion, Senator Lodge has shared a story in presenting before the Budget committee this morning. She sees the legislature as a wolf that accidentally knocked down a straw house and a stick house, killed some pigs and ate them — not to waste them of course. In her mind and in her analogy Idahoans should have sympathy for us, the wolf (and isn't THAT ironic) because we are just trying to do our best and make a cake for our granny and get through this economic time, and if a few pigs die we are sorry. Really.

The Empty Room

Behind the Senate chamber, in what used to be the Majority caucus room, is a room with tall windows, red striped couches and two fire places. The chairs in the room are usually empty and sometimes the fires are lit. Today I am sitting here with the warmth on my legs. It seems someone should sit here. We heard from the Department of Corrections in the budget committee this morning and I had to contemplate life in there as prisoners are packed closer, medical care fails, food budgets are cut, staff face furloughs and tensions rise. Gives a new meaning to liberty. I choose my food, go to a doctor of my choice, move from place to place, room to room. I can not imagine surviving in there. And yet too as the minutes pass while the gas fires roar, across the country, Americans do not have warm places to sit or sleep. This room sits here empty. Someone should sit in it.

Giving it Back

I've wandered the Capitol under construction with tour groups of legislators when it was dark, dusty and lifeless. Then slowly as we were allowed in, I wandered as the echoing building began to grow inhabitants, offices here and there had staffers, legislative colleagues would appear now and then in an empty chamber wide eyed and wandering too.

While I generally don't seek them out, I've been to monuments, to cathedrals, castles, the Taj Mahal; huge human crafted places, large, beautiful or strange enough to inspire awe. I will say that our State Capitol rises to that plane. Its beauty, size, it splendor has reached a level it may not have reached before. Perhaps I say this because the absence has made our hearts grow more fond of its roomy beauty; or perhaps the walls take the eye by surprise because no one builds things from marble anymore; perhaps because the 70s paneling is gone and the wear and tear and funk I loved perfectly well before have vanished. Now it all shines, not just literally, because it does that too, but one can't help but feel how much thought and labor has poured into the place; how many hours of so many skilled hands have worked there in the dark and through these summers and winters.

It has been gone. The building fenced and ugly like a wreck in the middle of our city for I think two and a half years. Over $100 million dollars poured into it, into wages and materials and minds for their problem solving and invention. I did not vote for the wings or, because the bill contained both, I did not vote to fix up the Capitol. But it is done and in my mind it is enough beyond belief that I ask you to go take a look.

The money that could have put school children in class rooms instead of trailers is is gone and it will be well spent if this building returns to those who really own it. The people of Idaho. If you all step inside and look up, if you climb the stairs, explore the corridors, step to microphones in the new hearing rooms, then it will be money well spent. If generations of Idahoans step in the building and find awe and pride, maybe then those who study now without current text books or run science experiments without proper equipment, maybe they, when grown, will forgive us. Maybe they will not think ill of us because we built something for them too– not just a stone shrine to house our own lawmaker's vanity.

Last night and today the building has warmed with life and people. I hope for much more of that. I hope that Idaho might feel it has its building back, that it is yours, not ours, that it is a place we as law makers can aspire to be worthy of in our life times and for the three months we stay here borrowing the air, the beauty and the space to write your budgets and laws.

Short Days

Boise has been thick in fog. Days are short and the session begins again soon. January 11th. Like many legislators, I take short trips to Legislative services to draft bills. I visit on the phone or after meetings with Republican colleagues. I contemplate strategy, wording, policy, politics. Sometimes there is too much debate about politics rather than about policy and law makers don't do things they should/could/want to because of what their party would do or what they think voters might think. But now I'm trying to hold onto what is possible. I'm watching the clock tick forward toward that day when the gavel again falls and I'm getting ready. I'm thinking about how to thrive in the more somber house, the Senate, and remembering how different every session is from the ones before. There is just no telling. It never feels the same. Like different worlds one year to the next. One tune taps its way through my lips and toes today. The whistled part of the song at the end of The Life of Brian. When they are all hung up on crosses they whistle and sing that tune… "Always look on the bright side of life… always look on the bright side of life…"

A Brightening

The sun was out this morning and Carol washed a mountain of spinach while I planted chili plants and put up a trellis for the peas. The Senate started a good half hour late as has often been the habit this past month of waiting, redoing bills and battling back and forth between the the Governor and House and Senate Republicans. But here in the building, faces are not as somber, tense exchanges are forgotten. Grey haired men are back to telling stories. Reporters roam the halls and stairs expectantly.

We passed two transportation funding bills this morning, neither of which was substantial, one of which was pie in the sky, amusing. It would entice trucking companies to register here in Idaho. I stood and presented my final two appropriations bills. I see them flying through the brown granite halls to the House as a sort of trial test balloon. We are hopeful but there is a slightly tentative flavor to the hope. There have been close deals or trials with a whole array of transportation funding and education gutting legislation, almost all of which was killed in one body or another.

We are close to going home. We think.

The rain leaves fields safe from drought. We all know that soon it will dry and there will be pipe to move, fields to irrigate. We are close now. Really. We think.

It Goes On

This weekend many of us got a taste of what it was once to be home with the session done. I know my colleagues from the far corners of the state suffer the most when this goes long. Jobs wait, or don't wait. Children grow, fields lie untended, yards, families alone for a month longer than the usual stretch of three.

If you look at the Senate calendar on line, it may look like we have a lot to do. Those are almost all bills vetoed by Governor Otter that we are having to pass again. Senate Republicans have held some of these on the calendar, skipping over them, hoping they will slip through after deals have been made so that the bills are not veto-fodder for the governor again.

So yes we are back, after the House left for three days. The seventy or so of them are back there across the muraled hall, bells signalling votes, Republican leaders deeply dug in and preparing to adjourn again. The games and fights go on within all the factions of their party and we stay, longer and longer with no end in sight.

Bloody Gashes

The Senate floor is nearly empty. The few left are answering e-mails on the stand-off and sharing u-tube videos of British singers and snakes. In one video a rabbit bites a snake on the tail and chases it across a lawn away from its burrow. In both videos the most unlikely prevail.

This morning Carol and I went running in the foothills. Cool air, early, quiet. Sunday there were sheep grazing and loose cows on the trail. It is astounding to be able to get so far from the Capitol by running out the back door. Boise is amazing, still rural at its edges, wonderfully so. Owls are nesting, our fruit trees are blooming.

When, on the way home, I tripped and fell on a rock and gashed my knee wide open, I was worried first that I would not make it to the Capitol in time for session. I had three appropriations bills up today and we were convening at 9:30 am. If we can't be in we can let leadership know and get a letter drafted for an excused absence. I don't think we had such formalities in the House.

Carol helped me up off the trail. We tied a bandanna below my knee to keep the blood out of my shoe, ran down the trail, showered, dressed, drove to the doctor, got seven stitches and made it to the Senate floor literally just in time to stand up and present the substance abuse appropriation bill and not miss a single vote before the Senate.

Alien Planets at War

While it might seem that sitting in the statehouse would be the best vantage point for up to the minute news on what is going on in the statehouse, it's not. As legislators, we might be in committee when something big happens. We might be the last person on the Senate floor working away at an inbox of 5000 emails. We might be meeting with a constituent in the hallway and miss the great conversation in the lounge, where Senators who do not have offices sometimes sit on old furniture to drink coffee or read the paper.

If you really want to know what's going on you probably read Betsy Russell's Blog or you wander around the state house and ask questions. Sitting in one place is the last best way to learn anything. Bathrooms surprisingly are excellent ways to catch up. That's because the House and Senate share bathrooms and they are one of the few places law makers from both Houses mingle. The chambers may be 40 feet apart physically, but in every other way they are light years distant from each other.

The Legislative Services office on the first floor where bills are drafted is fascinating for news. While, by rule of the legislature, they can't and won't tell you anything about who is drafting what or what is being drafted, you do get to watch who walks in and out and chat with them about what they know and why they are there in the dark reaches of the statehouse.

If you are not in legislative leadership, which I am not, of course you would want to visit the Majority and Minority leader's offices. But They are on the second floor in their offices and we don't see much of them. Honestly I've gotten more info out of my Senate JFAC Co-Chair, Dean Cameron, than out of my leadership this year. Dean is often happy to help me figure out what at the moment is going on amongst the factions and who is behind which budget proposal for the next day. Sadly though what he says is has usually changed by the next morning when we vote, so I've made a note to chat with him next year right before our morning JFAC committee meetings.

Republican leadership in their dark back hallway will tell much in sarcasm. Ask a direct question, get a very telling cryptic non-answer. Often very helpful if you know the language and facial expressions. Of course you can not walk right into a Republican caucus meeting because those are still closed meetings with secret handshakes and rituals of consensus I wouldn't like to know. Our Democratic open caucus meetings, as open meetings, do not usually reveal anything anyone did not already know. That is why they are open. We don't say things we don't want the media to hear. Fortunately the media will share the gossip with us when they visit. Which is handy but odd but useful.

Of course this open caucus thing got a bit out of control this year. In the House, Dan Popkey, whom I like, apparently sat in on an open Democratic strategy discussion and then went off and asked a Republican chair woman what she thought of the strategy before the strategy could be put to use. Call me wierd but when I was a reporter I think I did see myself a bit like the starship Enterprise exploring the galaxy under the prime directive. Report but don't interfere or do anything that would change the outcome of the news.

So, this morning, I think it is fitting to consider the legislature an alien planet, this place with foreign rules, pomp, circumstance, odd language and traditions. Surely though the House and Senate are separate planets, or alien races stuck on one planet with starkly different languages, beliefs and diets. The governor's office would be yet another alien race at war with the first two. And if we continue our century-long planetary war, the people of the galaxy will go hungry or roadless or unstimulated. Perhaps they will grow tired and invade the planet of state themselves, bang the gave and call it done for the year.

In any case it is hard to know what is going on in here unless you travel and speak several alien dialects. I suggest Betsy's Blog. She seems to travel light speed and have the best universal translator in the universe.

Once a Senator

Last week I crossed paths with no less than 20 former lawmakers. There are hundreds of us out there across Idaho in small towns and across the valley. So many that each year we have a memorial day in both the House and Senate for the ten or so who pass away.

Sometimes alumni of the legislature retain their titles. Certainly in more formal settings some like former Speaker Bruce Newcomb do. Newcomb works in Government relations for BSU. His wife, Celia Gould is also a former legislator and was appointed by Butch Otter to head the Department of Ag. Other former law makers have become so familiar in other roles that we might forget that they were once Senators and Representatives.

Roaming the halls of the Capitol are the many Republican law makers who have become lobbyists. Chris Ellis, former legislator is now a lobbyist for the Health Care industry. Kent Kuntz. Steve Ahrens. Clete Edmundson works in legislative relations for the Governor. Kathie Garrett Lobbies on mental health issues. Former Senator, Majority leader and lobbyist, Bill Roden was invited back on the Senate floor for a tribute to Alan Dingle last week. Former Senator Skip Brandt, a sort of John McGee type rising young star
of sessions past stood at the podium in our Senate Commerce Committee trying to abolish use of
the International Fire Code. Brandt lost a primary race for congress
and is now a County Commissioner.

Lee Gagner, former JFAC member roamed the halls this week for a few days. A former moderate and powerful member of JFAC, he lost a tough primary race and went from being a fixture to being gone.

Most those Republicans who have lost primaries are moderates. Some, like Otter appointee, Curtis Bowers made foolish mistakes. Bowers published a John Birch society anti-gay tirade in the Nampa paper and was shunned by the many lawmakers who were embarrassed by his words.

Well loved, long time Pocatello Senator Edgar Malepeai's wife, Brenda, recently passed away after a two year battle with cancer. Edgar, one of my favorite law makers, is still an elected Senator but has stayed in Pocatello these past two years to be with Brenda every minute he was able. Her funeral in Pocatello was lovely and graced with spectacular vocal trios and quartets. The Senate took the day off to attend. Lawmakers present and past sat in the balconies of the ISU's huge new music hall and watched tall men in Polynesian print shirts usher visitors.

In the balcony seats reserved for legislators, sat men I might have forgotten were lawmakers, Democrats, like Mayor Chase and educator Alan Anderson. Republicans from Eastern Idaho. They came to wish Brenda goodbye, to be there for Edgar.

I looked out across the hall and realized what an unusual club the people of my district have elected me to. It is not just a two or four or six or eight year membership. For life you are in part a legislator, just as the female spouses of the male lawmakers will always be "legisladies." You can hide from it I imagine, but in a book somehow or on the walls of the capitol your name and picture remain. I suppose even if we die eighty years from now, someone will say our names and try to come up with something nice to say for the annual memorial service on the Senate floor.

It is an odd thought for me, having never belonged to a club with official members, having never been part of such formality and tradition. Once a Senator, at least on some roll book somewhere, Senators we remain.

Boxes & Neck Ties

I think it is time to put on big ugly neck ties and get this legislative show on out of town. Downstairs the brown packing boxes have been delivered. Still flat, they occupy a part of the hallway on the first floor.

Crocuses have faded and my spinach is a green fuzz across the garden, having miraculously survived the freezes and frosts.

One of my afternoon committees has gone "call of the chair" or adjourned until further notice. The bills yet to come are ones I dread. So I think it is really time for the neck ties. We have less than a week more of budget setting. 7 am meetings, lunch meetings, 4 pm meetings for just a little longer. In total we may be two, three or some say four weeks from finished depending on how serious the governor is about vetoing bills to get his tax and fee increases on top of his nifty new compromise of $82 million in GARVEE borrowing and tens of millions in federal stimulus. The governor is amassing one heck of an empire of roads.

And we are cutting education……….

We'll be paying for the GARVEE debt for a long long time, even when we can least afford it … mostly to widen a stretch of Nampa-Boise freeway that could never be wide enough. I voted no this morning with a hand full of conservative Republicans. But it passed anyway. I'm not much of a borrower. Especially with the economy so volatile. This is a good time to pay things off and get back closer to the black.

I need to track down that tie. Time get us all headed in the direction of home.

Running Low

Senate Floor. Eight A.M. Senators scattered at desks. Rain falling lightly outside. The place echoes in ways the House chambers did not. There it all feels close and muffled.

It is a session of stops and starts. The little white numbers that outline the Senate and House calendars, sit mostly in their boxes. The boards are mostly blank as our beloved, red vested Senate pages leave and a new crop begins work today.

The House Chair of the Joint Finance Committee, Maxine Bell, shared her shopping habits with us last week at a dead moment, while the committee waited for JoAn Wood to come  make a presentation on transportation issues. Maxine explained that she buys everything at home in her own local grocery store and hauls it here to Boise to the place she stays. It is her own local contribution to her local economy and a way she visits with constituents. Most important, she shared that she knows when the session should be done by the amount of toilet paper she has left. She says that we all had better get to work or she knows she is going to run out.

Visiting the Ladies

I walked into the House chairmen's suite Wednesday. I know "suite" sounds grand, but really it is a back corner area with cubicles where the Republican chairs of all the House Committees have their "offices."

Dressed different patterned plaid jackets and sitting in two matching floral print, high backed arm chairs, I found the two good Ladies from District 35, Lenore Barrett and JoAn Wood. Rep. Wood Chairs the house Transportation Committee and Rep. Barrett from my old home, Custer County, Chairs the Local Government Committee. They looked elegant in the chairs, talking.

The two were sharing memories from the great depression. JoAn was just a girl but remembers licking the ration stamps and sticking them on the little cards. You needed full cards and money to buy your rations. They talked about the rations of sugar, shoes and gas.

The conversation led to box stores and the little local stores in their communities going out of business now.

This is not an every day scene, but it is. JoAn is the legislature's longest serving member. What she has seen and heard would fill books. Yet I realize even she remembers only echoes of the last time the economy took such a loss. We are in unknown waters trying to decide what of state government we need to fund and what we can do without.

This could be as bad as it gets. Or it might not be. The not knowing is what makes me cautious. Those who feel confident about a quick recovery may not agonize so much. But some of us will. This legislative session is just beginning. There is lots more to be seen. Lot's more struggling over conflicting realities, conflicting images of what's possible.

Unlike in the 30's we have a social welfare system. We are built to keep our nation's people from hunger. As long as we each remain generous, as long as we grow enough food in our collective American farm lands and can get our nation down from the endless war to a place of relative peace, we can survive anything. That's what I believe.

Booze

There is a very large white warehouse somewhere in Idaho, owned by
the state where all the liquor sold anywhere from Sandpoint to Bear
Lake is stored. We had a presentation on it in the Joint Finance and
Appropriations Committee today. I'm guessing a few more trucks leave
the loading bays bound for Sandpoint than for Bear Lake. But my point
it that the state owns all this booze and for some reason that amuses
me.

It is a good thing that the liquor dispensary thing amuses
me because today I almost fell down the marble steps of the Capitol
Annex, but instead dropped my brand new state computer which fell,
broke into several pieces, and died. I picture some poor state employee
getting not just the rumored 5% pay cut, but a pink slip too, just
because I dropped my computer and something had to be cut out of the
state budget to pay for a new one. That part does not amuse me. Things
are that tight. And yes, I do know that legislative service's budget is
separate from say the budget for some poor person working through
applications for food stamps, and separate even from someone out at the
liquor dispensary loading Jim Beam.

Believe me, I'm not the only one who worries and needs
amusement. The beer and wine industry is grim about the prospect of an
increase in beer and wine taxes this year. Such a tax increase I'd
always heard was supposed to cover mental health and substance abuse
services in the state. But today someone mentioned the funds going to
education. I'm hoping they mean just for this year… Many of my
conservative friends in the legislature, for good reason I think, like
to know that there is some "nexus" or relationship between a tax and
what it is used for. I'll reserve judgement until I see the bill.

There
is one more thing booze-related that amused me lately. It was a nice
party. A Birthday party for one of my colleagues in one of the Senate
Committee rooms. There was endless cake and soda and even some kids.
There was also wine.

Sure, that might not seem all that
surprising, wine at a birthday party. But this was in the statehouse.
OK the temporary statehouse. In all my five sessions as a legislator
I've never seen beer or wine in the statehouse. I've heard the stories
about the old days and the booze cabinets in the walls and the parties
and drinking with lobbyists. But I've understood we've gone dry under
the dome since then.

I do hear rumor that there was a reception
in the Governor's office in the Old Capitol with wine not so long ago,
but I wasn't invited, so this party and wine in the committee room was
novel and impressive. I had a glass. I even took photos. Sorry, I'm not
going to share them. I'm afraid I won't get invited again. And just
having them amuses me.

And you know I need some amusement. I
broke a state computer and have spent the last four weeks watching the
state economy do as my laptop did today, falling precipitously through
thin and uncharted air.

Sprinting

Each day I get up in the dark and walk through the sidewalks of some of Boise's
oldest neighborhoods. I walk across State Street into downtown, the high buildings and stoplights and to the temporary statehouse to
make it to our daily Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee (JFAC) meeting. Yesterday though I had a 7am human rights strategy meeting, ran downstairs to attend two committee meetings where we are done with approving agency rules and have started to hear bills. I walked quickly down state street to speak with Students at Boise High then almost ran back to the capitol to be part of a daily Health & Welfare lunch time Budget setting session. At 4pm I angled trough the legislative parking lot on foot to a reception for the Commission on Hispanic Affairs followed by racing to receptions and events for four other groups including the Idaho Sportsman's Caucus where we talked about ground water and wolves. At 11pm or so I walked back home in the dark and fell into bed. 

The pace this year is much faster. It is as if I'm sprinting to stay ahead of the bad news comming in from the tax commission about how Idahoans are doing… news on what we all are earning and paying taxes on and what we are spending and the state is collecting sales tax on. We feel in part what people all over the state are feeling, hesitation, serious losses, searching, scraping, rearranging, digging in.

Missing the House

I'm wearing my plastic encased sardine today. Really it is a pin made from a dead sardine set in clear plastic resin. It is kinda pretty from a distance. When you get up close its silvery skin is clearly that, real sliver fish skin in all its glory.

I'm missing the House. I miss the packed chaos and camaraderie of the balcony, 20 of us like matches at shotgun desks, fifty below, things flying, Brent Crane's candy dish, the committee meetings where any member might go off and take up ten minutes with a childhood story or burst into song or start debating in rhyme. Those things are not likely to happen in the Senate, no skits, no food, no coffee or tea allowed, not even water on the floor. Most have offices so we do not work side by side on the floor as much.

With the exception of Bart Davis who is so formidable and cracks jokes no one notices all the time, we are austere, dead serious and so far sedate. These are serious times and I don't know how we will get through it without some ability to laugh at ourselves. Dean Cameron tries in Committee. He has a way of making compassionate humor. But the social strata is more marked in the Senate. I have not gotten to mix with the chairs or leadership now that I am part of the body. It may be that I've yet to find the jovial crowd in the rank and file or be invited to lunch with them. I do miss the occasional lunches with Republican colleagues in the House.

Being in search of the lighter side of the Senate as we plow through these horrible decisions day after day, I'm thinking I might need to make a bit more effort. So I'm wearing the sardine pin today and maybe, just maybe I'll grab a hard boiled duck egg and wander back to the House balcony to leave it in Brent Crane's candy bowl.

Triage

The ringer on my phone is broken. It buzzes on the table or in my pocket, but I seem to miss a constant stream of messages. I look down and again, someone has called and I missed it. Of course sometimes I can not pick up. In committee we get in trouble if our phones ring, like in school we are supposed to pretend we don't have phones, much less whole e-mail, texting and web browsing systems right there in the palms of our hands.

The amount of paper we get in a single day, the envelopes and folders we open, the words addressed to and handed to each of us as legislators in a single day is staggering. We get more paper each day at home. Then of course there is the e-mail. My legislative e-mail in box is so active that on a week day in the course of answering a single e-mail I may get five more. I try to answer all the e-mail addressed to me personally. It is getting harder so I get up earlier or stay up later. Still I miss e-mails. In years past interns have tucked them in folders to keep me organized, folders i didn't know existed. I find letters there, speaking to the dark inside of a server, never read, never heard.

I say all this calmly because I have to. Panic doesn't fix the stream of information that comes at you in a day. It still comes.

Like standing in an anxious crowd of people so large it does not end and you can not imagine each of you reaching your destination on time or perhaps at all. You stand shoulder to shoulder smiling in the cold air, slowly shuffling together along. I might try to learn the name of every person passing, hear the end of every story they start, let all of those more worthy pass through the gate ahead of me again and again. But I can't. I do the best I can, trying to get somewhere, anywhere productive, trying to laugh with those I can, picking up a glove off the sidewalk, offering a bit of my pocket full of food to someone on a street corner, knowing that panic does nothing for any of us at all.

Eliptical

Normally I run in the Boise foothills to clear my head. My dog runs ahead and we wind our was along the ridge tops for 40 minutes, no headphones, just the wind and sound of feet on the trail and the dog's collar jangling. While my feet pound, my mind plays and I think a lot of strategy. It seems to be one of the rare times I do one simple thing uninterrupted, no multi tasking or talking or typing for more than 40 minutes at a time. So yes, my mind just plays. I run through issue debate, letters to constituents, ways to use legislation to solve problems, how to fix electrical wiring in the house or the best way to have a conversation with a colleague.

Like a million other Idahoans, I can't easily run right now. The trails are alternating between treacherously icy, deep slushy and simply muddy. So I've tagged along with my partner Carol to the gym. There in the gym I've found the eliptical. I cover the lights and dials and control panel with a shirt or towel, put on fast dance music and run uphill for thirty minutes until I can't run more. I go no where. It feel though like I travel through the time of the songs, the lyrics or style or beat. But my mind doesn't play. I am stuck in place with my feet spinning, sweating and working hard, but I get no where.

The legislature convenes tomorrow morning. It will be my first day serving in the 35 member Senate with my new Republican and Democratic colleagues. I am struck this year by how many of the issues (aside from the over whelming issue of the economy) are the same issues we have struggled over the last four years I've served in the legislature.

The Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry is trying again to get Idaho families to pay its taxes. Mike Moyle is again refusing to give local people to power to vote to tax themselves to fund better bus service, trolleys, light rail or other services to solve local problems. Republicans in the House are again lining up to oppose standards to ensure that day care centers around the state are safe and have solid educational content so kids are not just parked in front of a TV, left alone or confined to one crowded room all day, week after week.  

The process and its two year election cycle doesn't seem to produce much thinking ahead. It doesn't produce much cooperative planning or strategy to solve problems, just a lot of gut reaction timed to play out in elections. It feels sometimes a little like, as a legislature, ours has turned into an extreme body that runs in place year after year, sweating but getting no where.

Legislator School

In the room where the Senate State Affairs Committee meets, inside the old Ada County Courthouse, about 13 legislators sat today in the over-sized chairs and met some of the staff that will organize us, write for us, train, problem solve, track, research and draft legislation for us, pay us, monitor and audit state government for us… all so that we, farmers, ranchers, consultants, attorneys, businessmen and teachers can make state law for three months.

When I was first elected and went to legislator school in 2004, it was overwhelming then for me as a teacher, non-profit community organizer and small business owner to think of having professional staff tucked away in every corner of the statehouse ready to help me accomplish what I wanted to get done. I'd had interns, hundreds of volunteers and a few temporary employees. But this was new.Today it again felt foreign but amazing.

Dr. Moncrief from BSU came to compare legislatures around the nation for us. Now we appreciate how odd ours is (elected every two years and three legislators representing the exact same district.) I suspect we also appreciate how little staff we have compared to other states, how small our districts are, how low our pay is (less then $17,000 a year which seems low only if you've not recently worked full time for minimum wage or for a non-profit, or small farm.)

I sit at home tonight while the fire in the wood stove dies and smile thinking about New Hampshire with 400 house members compared to our 70 or Nebraska which has a non-partisan legislature. No political parties. Imagine that.

After its Over

I am home in front of the wood stove with the dog snoring and Carol doing her taxes. The pundits are assessing the session while I work to dig myself our from under mountains of unopened envelopes and unsorted e-mail.

All across Idaho legislators are taking off their badges and putting on sweat pants and finding home again. We visited Rep. Donna Pence in Gooding this morning. She had on her tree digging clothes, no lipstick. Human again. I had on my green corduroy jacket and a t-shirt. I’ll be happy not to see my black tights or a skirt for a few weeks. I’m sure I won’t get my way on that one.

But there is much to do after the session ends. I’ve taken a day to breathe and clean and sort and poke
around in the yard. I’ll go to debates and forums and meetings now.
Soon I’ll look forward to planting tomatoes and getting ready for the
campaigns ahead.

But I’m lucky, I’ve not been away from home and family for months like most my colleagues. Some have children they have left at home, young ones. Ken Andrus, Brent Crane, Steve Kren, and Branden Durst. Some are teachers and go back to work. Others take up small businesses that have sat still and dead, others return to larger firms where secretaries and staff filled the gaps. Many go home to ready for planting, lambing, burning ditches and moving cattle. As we grow more urban, we lose that feel of seasonal change. I remember traveling between teaching and my work for the forest service many years back.

But the legislative session distorts the seasons a bit. It is like a time warp where we miss winter altogether. We go in in the cold and dark and gray and come out with the lawn mowers blaring and now here the grass is coming up green and wild.

Saying Goodbye

I’m wearing the mixed perfume and cologne of many colleagues. I’ve found those I wanted to give a big hug to. Some escaped before I got to say good bye. Some when you say good bye you wonder with the hard races ahead will they be back. We all wonder. With the hours everyone puts in and what many give up in family and marriage and what might have been retirement I know the year will be heart wrenching for some. I’ll write more later. Now I’m going home.

Getting Silly

As we prepare to adjourn Sine Die as we call it… things are getting silly. People are playing competing country music songs on their computers, the speaker has a baseball he’s joking about throwing to the ceiling and Bill Killen has passed out some little plastic parachuters for all of us upstairs to throw from the balcony to those below.

We laid several issues to rest today and I’m in a good mood. I’ve done my mourning for the year so today I’m amazed at where we are after all this toil.

Business personal property tax is now a small-business-focused $100,000 exemption which costs about $17 million, rather than an unlimited exemption that would help mostly big industry. This exemption looks a lot like the $50,000 exemption Democrats crafted and proposed both this year and last. We have reason to be proud.

This afternoon the state retiree benefit plan, restricting what the state will pay for health benefits was killed by the State Affairs Committee. This issue should be taken up with state employees and retirees involved in the process and more information provided so they are informed and not left in fear of what complex legislation will mean to their lives. It will be a sad day when we as a legislature choose leave state employees to the whims of private plans and rising premiums, with less healthcare security rather than more.

Of the two pieces of legislation dealing with local option sales taxes, sadly H688, the legislation which I’d hoped would be amended to give authority to local voters to fund public transportation and other needs, was killed by the senate and never revived. Fortunately, HJR4, the constitutional amendment restricting the use of local option taxes was laid to rest by the Senate this afternoon. The delay the amendment caused communities like ours here in the Treasure Valley is inexcusable. Each year more people grow frustrated waiting in traffic. They have every right to be angry with this legislative majority which did nothing but stand in the way and propose obstacles to the local authority which local people have waited far too long for.

Empty Baskets

…

I know it is as much a message for us to go home as is Betsy Russel’s huge gold tie, but all the food in this place is gone. This is no plea for pity, just a phenomenon producing some interesting results. Low blood sugar is only aggravating the testiness of this place just now as tough votes threaten to hit the floor. Rep Jaquet suggested some gestures she would use if one more person said that a committee vote was some how more democratic than a floor vote.

As our caucus was starting (in the lounge because at first our caucus room was locked) and the press filed in, Lenore Barrett came in looking to get to the refrigerator. It, like the snack table and bowls and baskets normally holding granola bars, was undoubtedly empty. She stared around the room, with all the democrats stacked on couches and chairs, and commented that if she saw a nice leg she might take a bite.

Later I ran down and got her some licorice and made her a few legs she could actually eat. It is April fools day and some say we can not adjourn on April fools day. I’m ready. We’ve passed the substance abuse funds the Governor axed and those with the strings in their hands stand ready to kill or destroy everything good that remains, so let’s go home. Now.

Those We Like

Blues

    People ask me if it ever gets to me, bashing my well gelled skull against the polished granite of this place. I don’t give up easily but at the end of the session it is over, there is no hope but next year, the will of frustrated voters, a gift from the courts, acts of congress or something as yet beyond me. I know how to recover in the interim, how to take this feeling and turn it into determination, bring it to the voters and help them to take it to the ballot box to create change in this place. But for now we are stuck here with little but sinister excuses for policy before us.
    Yesterday I left the building on the verge of tears and walked in this morning trying to swallow the lump in my throat. We could go home now, bang the gavel now. Call it damage control. We would forgo hurting state retirees, encumbering the constitution, shifting burdens, letting developers charge hidden taxes and yes admitting that the majority are again this year leaving many still in harms way. That the Governor and Republican leaders have waited this long to address transportation funding of all kinds means we will likely do this badly, in some sort of forced or leveraged way.
    Here on the floor with a list of bills in front of us, I whisper to the white ceiling that we could go home now, before we vote. Make the clerk stop reading. Turn off the computers, empty our desks, hug, shake hands and be gone. The state would likely be better for it.

Madame Speaker

Retiring Rep. Margaret Henbest as acting Speaker of the House.

…………

I am a bit teary still. Long time democratic legislator for District 16, Margaret Henbest is retiring this year. She is very well known for her tireless work on health care and the House Health and Welfare Committee.
    It is a tradition of sorts that a long time legislator might have a chance, at the speaker’s consent, to serve as speaker for part of a floor session. When Margaret got up just now and the first of us had to address her as "Madame Speaker" a cheer went up. It sounded so good. Madame Speaker. May the day come and maybe should our numbers grow this year and next, just maybe that balance point in the state will be reached and maybe someday that Madame Speaker will be a woman, a democratic woman.
    I am leaving the House for the Senate so may never see that day. Seeing Margaret up there reminds me how close to the end of this session and this term we are. The board is full of bills to debate but committees are shutting down. We did not have Rev & Tax this morning but will print a few bills tomorrow. One will be mine. My technical fix to the sales tax exemption for non-profit organizations. I’ve labored over it for more than a year and may now have something that will work. The chair wouldn’t hear substantive proposals I or other democrats had, but this technical fix is probably not very threatening or likely to help me in my campaign or career so I think it escapes the political net.
    Somber times in a way. The secretary of state’s filings grow each day. Many of us will not be back. Sometimes that is healthy, sometimes we lose a unique voice or perspective common out in the voting public but not in here. I will miss Margaret. She is a strong, wise voice in the caucus, a balance to leadership sometimes much needed. I wish her well in her new adventures.