CAPITOL REPORT: The day after
"The process" broke down at
the St. Paul Capitol
"It's
the sleaziest thing I've ever seen," commented an officer of the St.
Paul Area Chamber of Commerce yesterday to the
St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper. "We are very concerned about
the process," she continued, "that something like this would
come up during the last 18 hours of the session." She was referring
to an additional 3-percent sales tax on food and alcoholic beverages sold
in the city's bars and restaurants, slipped into a final tax bill with no
notice and no public testimony in the waning hours of the 2007
legislative session. That's the way laws were being thrown together in
St. Paul.
"The
process" broke down. While putting on a cheery public face, the
closing hours were quite the opposite. Leaders of the majority party
abandoned all pretense of abiding by their own rules. New omnibus bills
were hastily cobbled together in the Senate in the middle of the night,
appearing suddenly for votes on the House and Senate floors. In many
cases, new provisions suddenly appeared in hundreds of page bills with
staff and members scrambling to uncover what they were voting on.
One
incident demonstrates the slip-shod nature of the business being
conducted by legislators bleary eyed from days of sleep deprivation.
Shortly before midnight when the session was constitutionally required to
close,
Rep. Tom
Emmer (R-Delano) asked about some specifics in the more than 500-page
Health and Human Services spending bill that had suddenly materialized on
their desks. Emmer inquired of
Rep. Carolyn
Laine (DFL-Columbia Heights), the author of the expanded home
visiting policy, whether this massive HHS legislation expanded state home
visiting to pre-natal visits. No, Rep. Laine assured him, prenatal visits
were removed from the bill "a long time ago."
It turns
out Laine apparently did not remember her own bill. Expansion of home
visiting to prenatal visits has been in the bill since the beginning, and
in the closing chaos, no one was able to set the record straight.
As the
time grew short, procedure fell apart, efforts to speak were overruled
and motions were ignored. Last night was reminiscent of the Senate close
in 2004, when then-Senator Michele
Bachmann's microphone was unplugged as she refused to be ignored on
the marriage amendment and the new social studies standards. Again,
legislators who claimed their right to speak were cut off.
Rep. Paul Kohls (R-Victoria) is shown with his mouth taped shut to protest the
cutoff of debate. [Enlarge
picture here].
After
careful analysis, EdWatch will follow up in a few days with a full report
of what's in and what's not on education. Comprehensive Sex Education,
for one, was removed from the final education bill, thanks to the
outpouring of protest by the hundreds of people who called into the
legislature since last week. TeenScreen survived in the education bill,
disguised as "voluntary, opt-in suicide prevention tools"
in the Safe Schools Levy.
The
expansion of state control over early childhood was switched from the
education bill to the HHS bill that was sent on to the Governor for his
signature. The new entitlement for early childhood was pared down to
cover only low-income families, but proponents telegraphed their plan to
institute the program for every family in the state in the original
legislation, authored by
Sen.
Tarryl
Clark (DFL-St. Cloud).
In short,
the bills that passed the 2007 legislative session gave little funding to
K-12, but expanded state education into early childhood and
all-day kindergarten, as well as welfare without work and larger state
government. Many legislators and the Governor deserve our thanks for
their hard work, speaking up and holding the legislative body accountable
for the direction they are headed. More details will be forthcoming
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