Posted on 06/14/2003 10:34:23 AM PDT by SheLion
Bob Kalish, a staff reporter for The Times Record, recently spent a day at the State House with first-year Rep. Leila Percy, D-Phippsburg. What follows is his description of a day under the dome.
AUGUSTA - It's a beautiful day outside the capitol building in Augusta, but inside the talk is of smoke-filled rooms and second-hand cigarette smoke.
The bill before the House of Representatives is one that would extend the range of the prohibition on smoking in public. The proposed law, LD 1346, "An Act to Protect Workers From Secondhand Smoke and To Promote Worker Safety" is similar to one already passed that prohibits smoking in restaurants. This one would extend the ban to bars and clubs where such smoke would place employees, especially those who don't smoke, in danger.
It is more than an hour past noon and House Speaker Patrick Colwell is trying to move things along, working through the lunch hour so they can recess early. But one after another, the representatives get up and either talk about the bad stuff cigarettes can do to your health, or the bad stuff government regulations do to small business owners' pocketbooks.
Despite the bright late spring light flooding through the arched windows in the high-ceilinged room, and the newly leafed trees swaying in the breeze outside, and the growls of hunger echoing through the hallowed halls of power, the legislators listen to each other with, if not complete attention, at least patience. It's as if they understand that democracy is not always neat and tidy, but full of long pauses and incomplete sentences and late lunches.
Then Leila Jane Percy gets up and is recognized by the speaker and says: "I speak as a performer, as someone who has worked her share of smoky bars and clubs. I urge you to pass this bill."
So ended a typical day for one of the 70 representatives who are finishing up their first legislative session. It was a typical day on several counts: Representatives spoke in favor of and opposition to various bills; they met with each other to discuss their votes; and there were moments of impatience and boredom as everyone who wanted was given a chance to speak. What made it atypical was an adjournment at 3:30 p.m. during a week of sessions that ran well past the dinner hour.
Newcomers
Percy, 49, is a freshman representative from District 51, which includes the towns of Georgetown, Arrowsic, Phippsburg and Harpswell. She has never served in government before, and is a relative latecomer to politics. Out of 151 members of the Maine House of Representatives, 70 of them are, like Percy, first-timers. Some, like Thomas Watson of Bath, have backgrounds in law, which makes the transition to government a bit easier.
"I think in two areas we lawyers have an advantage over the other freshmen," Watson said. "One is in the language of government, which is similar to the language of law. The other is in parliamentary procedure. Those two fields prepare us somewhat for this job, but it still requires a learning curve."
The House of Poetry
By 9:30 a.m., when the bell rang for the session to begin, Percy had been in the building for more than two hours, having attended a caucus of representatives from rural areas that started at 7:15 a.m.
For the next two hours or so, there was a certain poetry to the rituals and protocols occurring on the floor. The speaker was in charge, of that there was no doubt. One of the strangest rituals occurred when the clerk of the House was asked to read the bill before consideration. As she began to read, the speaker, in a voice that became progressively louder and faster, said what at first sounded like a poem. It went like this:
"The gentleman from (fill in the district) moves for the reading of the bill to be dispensed with and if that is the pleasure of the House then so be it."
And a very loud gavel became the final punctuation. The clerk, unmoved, calmly folded the legislation up and took her seat.
One time during the ritual the gallery was full of school children, who giggled at the sight of two grownups trying to out-yell each other.
Once upon a time, bills had to be read in their entirety because there were no fax machines or copiers or even typewriters. Now the reading of the entire bill is dispensed with.
The role of lobbyists
During a recess Percy and two other freshman representatives, Troy Jackson from the town of Allagash and Nancy Smith from Monmouth, sit and talk at a picnic table in the bright sunshine outside the cafeteria. They are eager to tell their stories to a reporter, to talk about what they have learned and what they have done and how they feel.
Jackson looks uncomfortable in a suit, his first, which he bought days after the election. He has the boyish looks and the straight hair of the boy who played Alfalfa on "The Little Rascals": a Maine version of "Mr. Alfalfa goes to Washington."
"I ran and won against a Democrat," he says. "Up there, there's only one party."
"Tell what happened with your bill," Percy suggests.
Although somewhat reticent, he says his main purpose in running for the Legislature was to help his fellow loggers, and the legislation he has expended most of his energy on was a bill to provide collective bargaining rights to certain forest products workers.
"Anyway," he says, "the bill was making its way through the process and it looked like we had enough votes to carry it."
What happened next made an impression on him he'll remember forever.
"Basically," he says, "what happened was the lobbyists from the forest products industry came down and began doing what they do. Lobbying."
He stops.
"That bill would have given the loggers a choice to go before arbitration with the landowner. It leveled the playing field."
He pauses, then continues: "The bill is dead. We lost nine votes after the lobbyists were through."
Percy shakes her head.
"It's not dead, it's tabled and will be brought back next session," she says.
The power of the lobbyists is what has surprised Rep. Nancy Smith the most.
"I seldom get lobbied personally," she says, "but I've seen others swayed by them."
One of the consequences of term limits is the tremendous number of freshman representatives who are sometimes at the mercy of lobbyists because the lobbyists are the individuals who know the most about certain subjects.
Percy says she has managed to avoid too much dependence on them.
"What I've done is found who are the people with expertise," she says. "The 'upperclassmen,' so to speak, who have knowledge about a particular issue. You go to them and you ask and they explain and you come away with enough knowledge to make up your own mind."
But it doesn't have to be upperclassmen. She mentions the time Watson distributed a sheet of paper with a primer on worker's compensation. Even though he is a freshman representative, he's also a lawyer with a lot of experience in the field of workers' rights. He shared that knowledge with his colleagues.
Smith says she has learned who to trust over the past four months, and she goes to them when she is unsure of the meaning of a bill or how it will affect her constituents.
Percy agrees.
"Just to be able to meet with a few other freshmen," Percy says, "and say 'God, what was that all about?' helps tremendously. Because it can really be overwhelming all the knowledge you're supposed to have at your disposal."
"It's a big chess game," Smith says, "and you have to think about five moves ahead."
Corridors of power
At lunch, Watson says the big surprise for him was the amount of time the process takes.
"I had no idea the time it would take," Watson says. "But you know the great thing about this process, everyone gets their say, everyone has his or her day."
Watson says the real work takes place in committees or in the halls outside the chambers. That's where legislators talk to each other and the lobbyists are available to answer any questions about their clients' interests.
Spending time in the hallways, you come to know the meaning of the term, "corridors of power." The scene is like one of those Richard Scarry children's books. The men are dressed in ties and jackets, the women in suits or skirts, and everyone has something in their hands — either a briefcase, a manilla envelope, a cup of coffee or soft drink. Lots of huddles, lots of animated conversations.
Lunch is at a hole-in-the-wall on the main floor of the State House. The decor consists of a couple of Formica tables and a counter, and Red Sox and Celtics posters on the wall.
Other legislators, deciding not to wait in the long line at the cafeteria one floor below, are eating here, too, or taking a sandwich with them. This is no high-on-the-hog buffet or two-hour lunch; it's where busy legislators and state workers grab a quick bite.
"What surprised me," Watson says, "is that you feel you can make a difference even in your first year. Leila has made a difference already (by supporting a bill that would help working fishermen on their property taxes) and so have a lot of freshmen."
Watson is another newcomer who made his presence felt early. During the early stages of the session a bill was in the works to make a statement against the impending war with Iraq. The bill looked like a shoo-in, but Watson, a Vietnam veteran, got up and said he couldn't support the bill as written. He was a lone voice among Democrats in voicing concerns about the effect the bill wou ld have on military families in Maine.
The bill was rewritten before it made the rounds again.
What is frustrating him now is the apparent lack of any bills addressing tax reform.
"One of the reasons I'm here is tax reform," he says. "That was what I said when I was campaigning. But there's a week left and we haven't seen any bills yet. It's very frustrating because I think we need a competing choice on the referendum besides the MMA bill (the Maine Municipal Association bill that would require the state to fund 55 percent of education costs for each school district in Maine)."
Representatives like Watson, Percy, Smith and Jackson are not in Augusta for the money. Representatives get $10,000 the first session and $9,000 the second. Hardly a killing.
As for LD1346, "An Act to Protect Workers From Secondhand Smoke and To Promote Worker Safety," it passed the House by a vote of 95-47 and will take effect 90 days after adjournment, by which time smoking will be prohibited in bars.
Isn't this awful? I wonder if the one business downtown can get the money back for the three huge smoke eaters he installed. And I wonder if he can get the money back for the big beautiful non-smoking glass enclosed room he built?
Your not kidding. Especially in NORTHERN Maine! The one place almost closed it's doors the last time Maine went smoke free in restaurants. They finally bought an expensive liquor license in order to accomodate everyone. Now, here we go again.
How can you possibly (in a bar) get drunk, wet yourself, hit on women, be loud and obnoxious, start a fight, fall down etc. without smoking??
It just ain't natural!
Seriously, they'd have to close the joints.
Then the owner came over. We've talked about the courses and players in the past. But this year he came over to tell me that cigar smoking was no longer allowed at lunch. He told me about all the new laws. I pointed out that those were in NY, not NJ, and he must surely know that I regularly came in there, and that I always would have a cigar when I did.
I asked him if I could finish the cigar I started. He told me that if anyone objected to the smoke I would have to put it out. I left my Pilsner Urquell and walked out. I won't be back.
ML/NJ
There are no tax reform bills on the agenda, but there WAS a now-passed smoking ban bill - which we can safely assume levees fines against 'offenders' because the socialist Maine government needs a way to pay for all the Somalies they keep bringing in as well as that wonderful Universal Health care bill I heard about?
The OWNERS of the ski lodge exercised their property rights. They're catering to a specific clientele. Smokers simply went elsewhere.
The owners of bars in which smoking will now be banned are NOT exercising their property rights. They are having their property rights taken away by the gestapo tactics of the Nanny State.
They pay their business taxes to the state every quarter...to have the state regulate more and more actions performed on their property. Who's gonna enforce this? An American version of the hizbah, the morality police?
There ARE organizations in this country which will take their case and represent them should they decide to fight.
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