The interim Montana Legislative Council, made up of some of the body's top leaders, is trying to figure out how to prevent a recurrence of the disaster that took place last year. That's a good idea.
The Legislative Council will meet Tuesday to start discussing some solutions that arose from a retreat in September.
Talk about killing the messenger. You would have thought we reporters caused the embarrassment that was the 2007 legislative session.
All we did was report on it. We told the public how the legislators found plenty of time in their allotted 90 days for partisan bickering, political gamesmanship and temper tantrums. Yet they couldn't find time in 90 days to agree a budget - a constitutional requirement, by the way - tax rebates and school funding, despite the state's unprecedented $1 billion budget surplus. It took a special session in May to finish their job after, thankfully, some cooler heads prevailed and worked out compromises.
There's plenty to criticize about the media, as reporters and editors will be the first to admit. But I thought the reporters who covered the 2007 session - print, radio and television - did our jobs well.
Like everyone else, we could see the train wreck coming weeks before it happened, and we reported it. We kept pressing the leaders about why they weren't working out compromises and tried to hold their feet to the fire. If you didn't care for the mainstream media's version, you could have watched the same horror film in the gavel-to-gavel coverage on the Legislature's own version of C-SPAN - TVMT. Any way you looked at it, it was ugly.
Let's hit the rewind button on the slim highlight reel of the 2007 Legislature for one painful last viewing. Republicans narrowly control the House, while Democrats have a slim margin in the Senate. The top House and Senate leaders either don't, or won't, or can't meet and talk about compromises as they deadlock over budgets and taxes. Gov. Brian Schweitzer throws gasoline on the fire at inopportune times.
At a House Republican caucus in the waning days of the session in late April, the Republican House Majority Leader, Michael Lange of Billings, before a television camera, twice says the Democratic governor can stick it where the sun don't shine or something like that. No one stops Lange's self-immolation. The Lange footage airs throughout Montana and nationally. It's still on YouTube. The Republican House and Democratic Senate play a giant game of chicken. Neither side blinks. The locomotives crash. Both chambers race to adjourn separately so they can blame the other in post-session conferences.
At its meeting Tuesday, the Legislative Council may consider banning reporters from the House and Senate floors where I believe reporters have been allowed since statehood. All in the interest of legislative decorum. Look in the mirror. We weren't the ones acting like feuding teenagers.
At its November meeting, the council had its chief lawyer research and hand out a state-by-state comparison of how all state Legislatures handle and, for the most part, limit media access. It included an Associated Press story telling how the speaker of the Georgia House, in the midst of the 2007 session, suddenly banned reporters from the chamber. Montana is one of nine states giving reporters unlimited floor access to its legislative proceedings. We appreciate that access.
It bugs some lawmakers that TV reporters may come in late and make a little noise setting up their equipment at meetings in cramped committee rooms. We print reporters can slip in and out quietly because all we're carrying is a notebook and a pen. It's not quite so easy for TV reporters, who are one-person crews lugging a camera, tripod and sound equipment. Cut them a little slack. They're only trying to do their jobs - which is informing the public. Maybe they should arrive at meetings earlier, but that isn't always possible. Surely this problem can be worked out without limiting access.
Others don't like how crowded it is over by the press table in one corner of the Senate. The table was once large enough to accommodate five reporters. Now only two reporters can squeeze in at a table not much larger than two TV trays. TV and radio reporters also hover over in that corner. Why? It has the only sound board in the chamber. Surely this problem can be solved without banning reporters. Put in another sound board and install an overflow press table in another corner of the chamber.
The other media-related issue coming up Tuesday - and the one that will be the real battle - is over open caucuses. Caucuses are where House Democrats or House Republicans or Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats meet during the Legislature to plot strategy.
Legislators met secretly behind closed doors in caucuses throughout state history until 22 Montana news media organizations filed a lawsuit in 1995. Why did we sue? We went to court because we believed these meeting should be open under the Montana Constitution's right-to-know and legislative openness provisions. We heard stories about how at least one caucus was browbeating its dissident members to go along with the caucus position on an issue or lose committee assignments or perhaps face a primary election challenge.
We won court decisions by the Montana Supreme Court and District Court in 1997 and 1998. Taxpayers had to pick up most of the tab for our legal bill. Caucuses have been open since the 1999 session.
Now a number of legislators apparently want to figure out a way to reverse that court decision and turn back the clock. They blame open caucuses for assorted ills, including the chaos of the 2007 session. Yet open caucuses didn't seem to cripple the 1999, 2001, 2003 and 2005 sessions.
Members of local government bodies and school boards aren't allowed to retreat behind closed doors for caucuses when they have a hot potato before them, but some legislators want to do just that.
If legislators decide try to close caucuses in 2009, I would be surprised if media groups aren't back in court immediately.
It's time that the members Legislative Council turn its attention to finding solutions to the real problems that surfaced in the 2007 sessions, instead of blaming the media.
Charles S. Johnson is chief of the Lee Newspapers State Bureau in Helena. He can be reached at (800) 525-4920 or (406) 443-4920. His e-mail address is chuck.johnson@lee.net
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