Ted Little columns

The Legislature’s regular session was “embarrassing,“ and Alabamians “deserve better.“

“It is time for the partisan and political caucus politics to end. The Alabama Legislature, and indeed, the Alabama Senate, must realize that the 2006 elections are over, and temperaments and egos must lessen, so that the people’s work can be accomplished on time.“

“The Legislature is in gridlock … We were hired to work for you, not to go to Montgomery and play political games.”

Well, yes. But isn’t all that painfully obvious?

The 14-hour filibuster began, Little said, because legislative leaders couldn’t come to an agreement about what to do with the universities’ request for an additional $25 million.

Little describes himself as “a tireless supporter for our colleges and universities” and notes that “their presence in our communities and my Senate district is critical to our regional economy.“ But, he says, “at a certain point, a compromise has to be reached.“

Apparently, for Little, that point was reached at 10:30 p.m. on May 19, the last legislative day of the regular session.

“It was time to stop the filibuster,“ Little said. “At the end of the day, we have a responsibility to all levels of education.“

He explained:

I joined 16 other Democratic senators to end the daylong filibuster and save the education budget. But we needed one more vote, an 18th vote to accomplish that. Of the remaining 18 state senators, not a single one voted to end the filibuster on the State’s education budget. That’s how the education budget died.

So if I’m reading his play-by-play correctly, 17 senators—all Democrats—voted to end the filibuster. That left 18 senators—Republicans and Democrats—blocking the budget.

I’m no stranger to the concept of legislative compromise. When I worked as a legislative aide in the Florida House of Representatives, I watched my boss make some difficult decisions. One of the most important—and most difficult—projects we worked on was the creation of a major child abuse prevention agency. You might think that a no-brainer concept like child abuse prevention would find quick passage among elected officials. Not so. It was difficult for us to understand why people would make a conscious decision to protect their turf rather than vulnerable kids. But they did. It was a fight at every turn. At one point, after weeks of tough negotiations and constantly trying to play Solomon with the half-dozen or so heavily involved parties—which included lobbyists, state agency representatives, advocates for private agencies and others—he made a decision that ultimately sealed the fate of the bill that created the agency: Either it was going to pass the right way, with the tools it needed to be successful, or it wasn’t going to pass at all. He made the choice that he would rather see it die than pass in an inferior form that might create more problems than it had the potential to solve. Word got around, and at least one lobbyist swore with equal fervor that the representative’s version of the bill wouldn’t pass on his watch. In the end, it did pass, and I believe to this day that its success is due just as much to the representative’s sheer will to get it right as to all the hard work that was done to make it happen.

I tell you that story to say this: Sometimes, you have to go to the mattresses. Sure, political compromise is an integral part of our system. It’s meant to produce good legislation by tempering the hard edges of overreaching ideas. But it has the potential to muddy the water into sludge. “Go along to get along” is a reality of our political system, the unmanned flying desk set gifted to us by our Founding Fathers. Making nice is, according to the circumstances, both necessary and perilous. But it’s up to us to know the difference – as our tea-tossing forebears in Boston Harbor did.
Little added that “because we did not pass education budget, other important legislation … also died.” Well, not exactly. I seem to remember a little something about a bingo bill that spawned its own filibuster – one that lasted not for 14 hours, but for two whole months.

So, you see, it’s not that the members of the Alabama Senate don’t have the ability to go to the mattresses, oppose bad compromise and stand up for what’s good for the people of Alabama. It’s that they’ve lost the ability to know when they should.

Little’s second column appeared a week later, on June 20. (Read it here.)  It looked and sounded to me like the end-of-session talking points I remembered getting from the leadership offices when I worked in the Florida Legislature. Basically, staffers put together the high points of the session – and/or, the low points to blame on the other side, if you’re getting the info from a majority or minority office – for legislators to use in their newsletters, club speeches and the like.

This column was basically a recycled version of the one that had appeared a week before. Consider his comments on:

What was lost to the filibuster:
June 20: “We passed a ban on smoking in public places, cracked down on sexual predators and passed three important measures to fight illegal immigration, but, unfortunately, these bills died in the House of Representatives did not pass both houses of the Legislature.”
June 13: “Because we did not pass education budget, other important legislation, like the food tax cut and immigration reform also died … We also passed a crackdown on sexual predators and a smoking ban in public places, but both pieces of legislation failed to pass both houses of the Legislature.”

What wasn’t:
June 20: “Lost in the haze of filibusters during the regular session were legislative achievements. We protected the children’s health insurance from any cuts, ensuring that no Alabama child lost his or her health coverage, we protected senior citizens programs and we increased funding for Medicaid by $150 million. We passed a new college savings program for our families. All of this is now the law of Alabama.”
June 13: “We did have important accomplishments. During this session, the state Senate passed a new college savings program that is now law, and we increased funding for the children’s insurance program, protected senior citizens and increased Medicaid funding by $150 million, and we passed the General Fund budget.”

What’s causing the problem in the first place:
June 20: “It is time for the partisanship and political gamesmanship to end. We must put politics aside and focus on our priority: the people of this state … legislators must stop the partisanship, come together and do what is best for the people of this state.”
June 13: “We were hired to work for you, not to go to Montgomery and play political games … I dedicate my service to ending the political games that plague the state Senate and the Alabama Legislature.”

Little does say that he “gave notice … that I would accept no legislative pay for the special session.” Kudos to him for that. It did take legislators two chances to do their job, after all. I would actually prefer that they forfeit their pay from the filibuster-riddled regular session that made Part Deux necessary; the least they can do is refuse more than one payment.

Ted Little is a nice enough guy. But as I said last month, the problem is that the bitter partisan divide either makes every senator part of his chamber’s failed leadership or renders him powerless to stop its abuses.

Little concluded his June 13 column, “It is time to work for the people of Alabama.”

I would ask, when has it not been “time to work for the people of Alabama?”

Yes, it is time – time for the people of Alabama to go to work for themselves at the polls and put an end to this Senate madness once and for all.