Alaska Civics 101 With Rep. Berta Gardner.

I made  it a point to roust myself this morning to go hear Representative Berta Gardner give a talk at the Unitarian Universalist Forum.  She was there to talk about the legislature, and her talk was fascinating and very well received.  The thing I liked about it was that she was able to explain, in layman’s terms, what actually goes on in the “legislative bubble” that is Juneau, from a Democratic perspective.  She is charming, and intelligent, and speaks from the heart.  She talked from a place of both idealism and pragmatism, the two “isms” that often enter into an uneasy dance in the halls of the capitol.  Here’s the first part of what she had to say.   I’ll post more later on her thoughts about the Senate, the Governor, the gas line, and more.

Those of you who remember Schoolhouse Rock, and the song “I’m Just a Bill,”  will never think about it in the same way again.  A few more verses are in order to get it up to date.

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When a bill is introduced, it’s assigned to a bunch of different committees, and sometimes if it’s a “greased bill,” it will go only to one committee because someone wants it to pass fast. And if people don’t like it, they’ll give it like five committee assignments, and it’s sort of a kiss of death.  But not all bills that are introduced are really even intended to go anywhere.  Sometimes they’re introduced for a media splash, or a constituent or somebody might ask you to introduce a bill that you don’t even necessarily agree with. Some people will go ahead and do that, and then never even ask for a hearing, and they can just let it die a natural death. 

Some bills are introduced to make a statement, and to start a discussion and get people talking about an issue.  And some bills, frankly, are such junk that they shouldn’t ever see the light of day, and that happens a lot.  And then there are a lot of good bills that can’t ever get a hearing either.

The way the legislature works is that every committee is dominated by the majority.  There is proportional representation.  The Republicans are in the majority (in the House) and the Democrats are in the minority, except that there are four Democrats who organize with the Republicans.  Richard Foster has done that his entire career, and there are three others who joined them this year, and it was a heartbreaker for us.  It meant we lost seats as Democrats in the minority, and it was personally very very distressing, and I don’t want to talk about that too much except to say I think  in some ways our caucus, the Democratic caucus, didn’t ever completely recover from that, and it still weighs heavily on all of us, even today.  It felt like betrayal, and short-term gain, and there’s a lot of hard feelings and sadness about it.  But, that being the case…we’ll say the Democrats are the minority, the Republicans are the majority in the House.

Every committee, of course, will have more Republicans, and the Chair will always be in the majority.  And the Chair alone determines what bills will be heard, and the Chair can simply say, “I’m never going to hear this bill.”  Sometimes the Chair will bring up a bill and say, “This bill’s not moving from committee, but we’ll give it a hearing,” and at least you get some opportunity to discuss the content.

So, it makes it really really difficult to actually get legislation through, particularly if you’re in the minority.  So, what people do is try to find a “majority sponsor” for a bill.  So, if you really care about an issue and you want to have it happen, and you don’t care if your name is on it or not, you give it to somebody else.  Sometimes people do all the work [and say] “Here’s the packet, here are the resources, here’s everything you need, if you’ll just introduce it.”

If you look through legislation, you’ll see that there’s a lot of cases where there’s a “majority prime sponsor” and a “minority co-prime.”  That’s almost code…not entirely…but most of the time that means it’s the minority member’s bill, and maybe they did all the work for it, and the majority member kind of has their name on it and gets hearings and gets it through.  That happens.

Another thing that happens is that people just plain steal bills.  And that’s happened to me, it’s happened to everybody, where I’d introduce a bill on the House side and have a bill packet with all the information, ask for a committee assignment, and somebody on the Senate side could take the entire bill, and the bill packet, and copy it all, with no attribution, introduce it on the Senate side, and actually get it through. (…)  Do I care about that?  The fact is that it’s irksome, but the fact is it’s unlikely that I would have succeeded in getting it all the way through, and it is the law, and it is what the Municipality wanted, and something I supported, and that’s the way it is, and I can still say, “Well, I wrote this bill,” which is true.

The other thing that happens is that if a Democrat or a minority member introduces really good legislation and the majority won’t let it out, for whatever reason, then the following year a majority member will introduce the same bill. And that’s happened to all of us, and you say, “Oh, I’ll co-sponsor it!  I’ll work with you on that,” and you try to get it through that way, and it’s fine.  It’s still your bill and it’s still something you believed in, and it happened, and that’s the way it is.  But by and large, as a minority member it’s really difficult to get your own things through by yourself.

It’s not all terrible, though, because it forces people to work together, and to build alliances, and make things happen.  So, that’s important.  What is the power of the minority?   I think the minority’s role is to say, “The Emperor has no clothes.”  And, you know, that’s really important.  And the way I’ve been thinking about it this year… because my first session I was kind of in “consideration mode.”  Listen. Learn.  My second session I started branching out more and got incredibly frustrated.  This session, partly because of the three democrats leaving, I was just thinking I’m going to be aggressive.  I’m going to be out swingin’.  I’m gonna call ’em on their bull. (laughs)  Nothing’s going unchallenged…if it’s our guys, or their guys, I don’t care.  And I tried to really do that… sometimes maybe too much.

 

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