Almanac: At the Capitol

One of the most memorable lines in English literature is Macbeth's lamentthat life "is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifyingnothing."

I love that line! I hope it's not actually true, but it captures our sense of the absurdity of much of what happens in the world.

Well, Macbeth's description of life as a whole may or may not be true, butit certainly captures the essence of the first few weeks of any given legislative session. There is relatively little that can be done on themajor task of the session — putting together the State budget — becauselegislators have to wait for the February forecast before they can start
divvying up the pie.

So inevitably much of what they do is preen and posture, float trialballoons, and try to do as much damage to their opponents as is humanlypossible without appearing to be doing so.

Of course, one of the few things the legislature can do while they are waiting for the numbers is set the rules for themselves. And this time around, one of the things they did was increase their per diems by a hefty amount. They also increased their compensation for housing, and the House made the housing allowance year-round (The Senate was already this generous).

What are they thinking? Does it really make any sense at all that the very first thing that the Legislature does when they onvene is to raise the dollar amounts going into members' pockets? What does that say about their real priorities? Or, put another way, it says that their first priority was to take care of themselves before they start taking care of business.

I won't pretend to know what the ideal level of compensation for Legislators is. And I certainly wouldn't deny that a good number of them are making huge financial sacrifices to be there — maybe more than is reasonable to ask in some cases. But I can say with absolute certainty that the decision to raise per diems and housing allowances had nothing to do with a serious
consideration of the issue of legislative compensation, and everything to do with the simple desire to use the power they had to raise their take-home pay. If they wanted to address the issue seriously, they would hold
hearings, listen to voters and experts, and make a decision based upon the available evidence.

Instead, they did it as soon as they could, and raised the amounts as much as they felt they could get away with.

How many of these guys would have told their voters that the first thing they intended to do was raise legislative compensation? Before they did a lick of work?

How many would have gotten elected if they had done so? Is it any wonder that citizens are cynical about politics and politicians? Most of the time, campaign rhetoric is nothing but "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing."

'nuff said.

The 2007 Legislative Session will be unlike anything we have seen in Minnesota. And that's saying a lot for a state that has seen wild swings in political dominance and the election of a former professional wrestler to the Governorship in recent years.

The election of 2006 set the state up for a particularly volatile session, both because of the huge margins the Democrats wracked up in both the House and the Senate, and the skin-of-his-teeth reelection of Governor Pawlenty. The selection of Senator Larry Pogemiller to become Senate Majority Leader adds a lot of spice to the mix as well.

All the talk of bipartisanship and the obvious future political aspirations of the Governor would lead you to suspect that 2007 will be a very productive and moderate-liberal session, but don't hold your breath. Democrats laid down the gauntlet by proposing a number of tax increases on the first day of session, and the Governor returned the favor by threatening to veto any tax increase.

So what can we expect? Or better yet, what's the best outcome we can hope for? Once the political statements are made and the partisan lines drawn, the legislature has the opportunity to make some real progress on closing the achievement gap in education (white students in Minnesota outperform their minority counterparts in educational achievement by huge margins in Minnesota), relieving property tax burdens, and improving state government service delivery.

But my bet is that the politicians will posture a lot, spend a lot, and accomplish very little that isn't symbolic.