From West by Northwest.org Voices of the Northwest Sadler's Sense: Legislature's Sandbox Politics Irresponsible By Russell Sadler Aug 18, 2005 An all-nighter in Salem. The longer it goes on, the longer the Legislature resembles high school. In the writhing death rattle of the expiring legislative session lawmakers passed a bill creating the Public Commission on the Oregon Legislature. This 30-member commission is to study ways of improving “the body's administration, procedures, facilities, staffing and overall capacity.” It is a futile task. The Legislature’s problem is not organization. The Legislature's problem is immaturity. We have spawned a generation that does not understand what it means to govern. Ideological lawmakers know what they know and cannot get along with anyone who differs. They are only interested in getting their own way. If a process prevents it they change the process rather than accept its results. They behave like spoiled, indulged children. There is no other way to explain the complete breakdown of the Legislature in the last decade. It has become completely dysfunctional. Its members cannot get along with one another. Governors -- former legislators themselves from a better era -- have to be called in to mediate impasses that perpetuate the session and prevent adjournment. Lawmakers are incapable of constructive compromise. If the joint House-Senate budget process isn’t going the way House Speaker Karen Minnis wants it to go, she simply orders House members not to meet with their Senate counterparts. Then she threatens to refuse to pass a budget until the Senate capitulates. The Senate capitulates because it is the only responsible alternative left. This is not governing. It is a tantrum. In the meantime hundreds of Oregon school districts are about to start fall term with no idea how much money they will have for this school year. No superintendent or school board can manage their enterprise under these conditions. How else you you explain the disgraceful handling of an simple extension of the North Bend Airport runway with lottery-backed bonds by “Majority Leader” Wayne Scott, R-Canby? The Legislature routinely helps Oregon communities extend runways to promote commercial airline traffic and the economic development that commerce attracts. But Scott deliberately held up the bill because Rep. Arnie Roblan, D-Coos Bay, voted for a floor vote on an education funding bill the Republican leadership did not want. This is not ‘hardball” politics. It is playground bullying. But Minnis and Scott should not take the rap for this immaturity alone. The abuse of the Legislative process began in the early 1990s when Rep. Larry Campbell was Speaker of the House. Campbell unilaterally repealed one of the Legislature’s most important unwritten rules. For most of the post-World War II era it was considered unethical to ask a legislator to vote against his constituents or his conscience. Party loyalty was limited to procedural issues. If a lawmaker willing engaged in vote trading that was another matter, but the leadership was not to force lawmakers to vote against constituents or conscience with threats of reprisals. Campbell quietly declared those rules “no longer operative” and the bullying began. The fundamental problem with the Legislature is that lawmakers do not represent their constituents anymore. They represent the people who contribute to their campaigns. Scott and Minnis have accepted contributions from national Republican and self-described conservative organizations. These organizations expect Minnis and Scott to deliver local expressions of their national agenda in exchange for their money. If legislators are unwilling to vote for these policies they are bullied, cajoled and threatened with primary opponents by the “leadership.” That is what happened to former Rep. Lane Shetterly, R-Dallas, in the last session when he objected to the “borrow-and-spend” practices of the Republican leadership and supported a surtax to balance the state budget. Shetterly decided not to run in the next election rather than face retaliation from Minnis and Scott. Shetterly now heads the Department of Land Conservation and Development. There are some structural issues that bedevil the Legislature. Constitutional initiatives passed in the last decade allow voters to approve spending vast sums of money -- on prisons, for example -- without raising any money to pay for them. The Legislature is no longer in control of the public purse strings. The Public Commission on the Oregon Legislature might address this structural issue. But the growing dysfunction of the Legislature and the growing abuse of the legislative process is the result of “leaders” who do not respect the institution or its process. If the process threatens to deliver unwanted results, they simply thwart the process. That is not leadership. It is a caricature of schoolyard sandbox politics. It will not end until voters replace such “leaders” with more mature, more responsible people. “The fault, dear Brutus,” wrote William Shakespeare in a remarkably similar context, “is not in the stars, but in ourselves.” Copyright © 2005 by Russell Sadler Russell Sadler is a journalist and a lecturer at Southern Oregon University. You may write him c/o publisher at westbynorthwest.org. Visit Sadler's Sense column's at West By Northwest.org: Sadler's Sense: Beyond Dorchester - Can Our Traditional Parties Stand for Anything Substantive? Sadler's Sense: The Oregon Gasoline Tax, Pork Barrel Projects and Big Brother Sadler's Sense: A Classic Conservative Judge Who Conserves the Law Sadler's Sense: On the Economic Ramparts--The Northwest, Defazio and CAFTA Sadler's Sense: Can Dissatisfaction Become a Wave for Political Sanity? 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