Well, shit.
… I mean hi hello are you great I’m great everything is great
Whether you’re “social distancing” or “self-quarantining” or must continue to deal with humans in person or are stuck on a military base for a couple of weeks because you took a vacation or whatever, I welcome you and and am grateful for you and genuinely hope you are well.
Statehouses, however … they’re kind of a mixed bag right now.
But a thing many of them have increasingly in common this week? A marked lack of action.
Just What The Doctor Ordered: Many legislative sessions are scheduled to adjourn later this month, but 36 state legislatures are actively meeting this week (37 if you count Virginia, which was supposed to be done but went into overtime to iron out final disagreements in the state budget).
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… or rather, they were meeting. As of this writing, an ever-increasing number of them are calling it quits for a while.
- The Missouri state Senate is suspending sessions in its “petri dish” of a chamber until at least March 30.
- The Missouri House, on the other hand, began working overtime to finish its work on the state budget and hope to bounce as soon that’s done (likely some time next week).
- The entire Illinois General Assembly cancelled its session next week, as did the Delaware legislature, which also shut down capitol building tours.
- Delaware lawmakers are heading home for a while will reevaluate each week whether to resume session.
- They’re looking to make up lost legislative days later on, a la snow days.
- Upon adopting a budget that included $100 million for coronavirus-related needs, the Georgia legislature announced its indefinite suspension (it’s scheduled to adjourn on Apr. 17).
- Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is pushing lawmakers to pass urgent bills quickly so they can leave town.
- In Nebraska, lawmakers are about to take a scheduled four-day break but are considering temporarily suspending session instead of returning on Tuesday.
- Colorado lawmakers are also weighing a temporary suspension of their legislative session
- … even as they consider landmark legislation that would create a public option for health care in the state.
- In South Dakota, one lawmaker is waiting for COVID-19 test results after coming down with a cough and chest congestion, but his colleagues are pressing on to pass a state budget in the waning days of session.
- In Washington state, legislators are scrambling to pass a budget that includes $200 million for coronavirus response before session adjourns this week.
Other legislatures are opting to continue meeting, for now, but with some … adjustments.
- Next week, the public will no longer be invited to testify for or against legislation in the Maryland legislature’s committee hearings.
- Instead, they will be encouraged to submit comments electronically.
- Connecticut lawmakers have postponed all public hearings this week and next, and they voted to change session rules to allow them to cast committee votes by phone.
But not every legislature is taking these precautions.
- The 400-member New Hampshire state House continues to meet in the face of the March 26 bill crossover deadline.
- … except for one member who’s been quarantined for over a week after returning from a trip to Italy.
- In Kansas, it’s basically business as usual as visitors toured the capitol and students continued to scurry around the statehouse in their roles as legislative pages this week.
- In the Tennessee legislature, GOP leadership actively pushed back on Democrats’ calls to temporarily halt session or even just limit non-essential meetings—even after Republican Gov. Bill Lee declared a state of emergency due to the coronavirus outbreak.
- Instead, the speakers of the House and Senate (yeah, I know it’s weird for a Senate to have a speaker, don’t ask me) issued a super bold statement encouraging groups to “consider rescheduling or postponing” any “non-essential events and activities.”
Bad Medicine: Two weeks ago in this space, I wrote about the Republican legislative walkout in Oregon.
Since there’s been about three years of news since then, allow me to refresh your recollection:
- At the end of February, almost every single GOP lawmaker in Oregon — in both the House and Senate — fled the statehouse to prevent votes on a landmark piece of environmental legislation.
- The bill (SB 1530), which would cap greenhouse gas emissions and directly attach a cost to that pollution, was nearing a floor vote when Republican senators bounced, denying the chamber a quorum to vote on that bill — or any other.
- The measure wasn’t actually anywhere near a House vote, but GOP representatives decided to give themselves a little vacay anyway, joining their Senate colleagues at undisclosed out-of-state locations.
- Under the state constitution, a two-thirds quorum of a chamber’s members must be present to conduct business.
- So, despite the fact that voters gave Democrats supermajorities in both chambers in the 2018 election, at least two Republicans must be present in each for anything to get done.
- For the record, exactly one Republican in each chamber declined to join their colleagues in their complete abdication of their responsibilities to their constituents: Sen. Tim Knopp and Rep. Cheri Holt, who both represent swing districts.
- Democrats attempted to negotiate with Republicans over the subsequent week as they raced the clock to act on the climate bill and many, many others before session adjourned on March 8.
- The good news, though, is that apparently Democratic leadership has truly learned the hard lessons of last year, when Republican state Senators walked out to protest this same measure—only that time, it worked.
- Democrats caved in 2019, and Republicans were effectively rewarded for taking a taxpayer-funded vacation that killed a bill they didn’t like but didn’t have the votes to actually defeat the old-fashioned way.
- Heartbroken over the plethora of legislation Republicans effectively killed in their protest over one bill—including measures to prepare the state for an earthquake, changes to the way wildfires are fought, efforts to address the state’s housing crisis, protecting insulin users from unaffordable prices, and millions grants to small school districts—Democratic leadership knew they couldn’t afford to let the GOP’s hostage-taking tactics work again.
- They spent days trying to end the impasse, but in the end, Democrats adjourned session, leaving their Republican colleagues to face the consequences of the state’s undone business.
… which hopefully they will this very fall.
- After all, if voters bump the Democratic supermajorities up to quorum-proof majorities, Republican lawmakers will be rendered totally powerless.
And they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.
Fever: Also in this space previously, I discussed a move by Kentucky GOP lawmakers to punish Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear for having the temerity to get himself elected.
How? By finding ways to strip him of various aspects of his authority as governor.
- Republicans’ first move was to eliminate the governor’s power to appoint the state’s transportation secretary.
- A bill that passed the state Senate along party lines last month hands that power to a 10-member board—some of whom will be nominated by the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, an organization whose members stand to directly benefit from decisions made by this board.
- Another bill, introduced just last week, subverts the governor’s authority to appoint members to the horse park and state racing commission by making those appointments subject to (the GOP-controlled) Senate for confirmation for the first time ever.
- You’re probably aware that horse racing is kind of a big deal in Kentucky, so this is a pretty freaking important commission the legislature is mucking with.
- Other bills recently introduced as middle fingers to the Democratic governor (and, by extension, the Kentuckians who elected him) include measure to prevent Beshear from reorganizing the state’s human rights commission and the board of education.
- Perhaps most significantly, though, Republicans are pushing forward with a measure to all but shred Beshear's ability to issue executive orders by giving legislative committees—which just happen to have Republican majorities—the power to reject them.
- The same bill would also delay new orders from taking effect by at least 35 days (currently, they go into effect immediately).
- Also, any "administrative body" established by an executive order would be disbanded 90 days after the end of a governor's term.
- This attack on the governor's authority comes after Beshear's issuance of a number of important executive orders, including
Welp, that’s a wrap for this week. Maybe you’re already working from home, or maybe you don’t have that luxury and have to put yourself at risk for coronavirus exposure to make ends meet or to continue your professional success or because your kids and other relatives need you to take care of them or you’re out of toilet paper and have to travel an hour to find some because that’s apparently what people buy in a panic or ... Well, whatever your situation is and whether or not you have the capacity to knock off early and get a jump on your weekend, do what you need to do to take care of yourself. If your boss is worth a damn, she’ll support you all the way.