Under Cover Budgeting

One of the more frustrating parts of my job is that my schedule is often at the mercy of politicians and policymakers, and they are NOT notorious for being punctual. Most of the time that's okay, because I'm not notorious for being punctual either.

As a great man once wrote, and then I bastardized, "A reporter is never late. Nor is he early. Instead, he arrives precisely when he means to."

However, when a city council debate has stretched on for hours and everybody wants their turn to talk, but nobody's really saying anything and it's getting on toward my bed time, I can occasionally get a little peeved. As much as I would sometimes like to, I can't bail out when the policymakers get long-winded, because then we don't get the story. And so, I'm stuck.

But I would rather be stuck in a sixteen hour budget hearing than be stood up by my elected officials. Unfortunately, it seems Wisconsin's state lawmakers have opted to combine both approaches, and it's more than just an annoyance for reporters. It's bad for every Wisconsin citizen.

I've only been the direct victim of our state legislature's heel-dragging once this year, and it made me want to pick a legislator at random and punch them in the face. I was assigned to cover a portion of the Joint Finance Committee's hearings on the budget. The hearing was scheduled to begin at 10:00 in the morning. I figured given the legislature's record of late, I could show up at 2:00 and catch plenty of action.

I was wrong. The JFC had not yet convened at 2:00. I spent two hours of my afternoon sitting in their chambers waiting for them to get underway before uttering a string of cusswords a nearby lobbyist thought was directed at him and storming out of the capitol.

That hearing didn't happen on that particular day. It was rescheduled for noon the next day. It finally got underway at 5:30 that evening. I didn't care. Our news director had decided to rely on secondhand sources for the remainder of our state budget coverage. With only two bodies in the newsroom on afternoons, I think she made the right call too. It certainly wouldn't have been a good call to halve our news coverage strength and wrack up overtime to cover one story that might not have even happened.

The problem is that if pulling coverage on the state budget proceedings was the right call for our newsroom, it was the right call for a lot of other newsrooms as well.

And the delays in addressing the budget aren't because State Sen. Fred Risser has gotten turned around wandering in the wrong wing of the capitol. Every minute the start of these meetings is delayed is a minute lawmakers are caucusing, doing the nitty-gritty work of negotiating a budget behind closed doors instead of in open session where the public and their watchdogs can follow along with every step.

How did Wisconsin's state budget wind up with plans to allow illegal immigrants to get proxy driver's licenses attached to it? How did a 75-cent monthly fee on cell phone users get the thumbs up, and how did it become okay for oil companies to pass on some of their tax burden to regular folks at the pump? Gosh, I really wish I could tell you, but those decisions were made without public or media oversight in a closed caucus.

That leaves 132 grown-up children unsupervised in a $62.2 billion candy store, and that should be enough to alarm any Wisconsin citizen, politically ambivalent or not.

And if by chance a member of the public had wanted to sound off on a particular budget item, they'd have had to hang around the state capitol for a couple of days straight, waiting for the body to convene at its own leisure. That's no way to involve the citizenry in government.

There's a reason lawmakers are required to give the public notice listing exact start times well in advance of any kind of meeting. Wisconsin's closed caucus system violated the spirit of those laws, and it needs to go.

the Crotchety 23-year-old

First, I start losing my hair. Now, for the first time in my life as a semi-political-animal, I find myself in agreement with Wisconsin State Senator Alan Lasee (R - De Pere). My God. I'm only 23, but it looks like I'm on pace to be drinking prune juice and bopping about in Depends by the time I'm 30.

Don't worry, it's not on some politically-charged right-wing issue like abortion or voter ID or dismantling the University of Wisconsin system that I find myself coming to this chance concurrence with Sen. Lasee. Unfortunately, it is an issue that makes me look every bit the dinosaur I'm afraid I'll turn into some day: those damn kids and their text messaging.

It seems the people in my phone book have dragged me, somewhat unwittingly, into the text message revolution. I fought the trend as long as I could. I went on a couple dates with a girl this summer who, it seems, was uncomfortable with any means of communication besides text messaging. Needless to say, we are no longer in regular contact.

Excepting situations where a telephone conversation is impossible (loud concerts, busy days at work, city government meetings), I see no reason to even bother with a text message - an exchange that would take thirty seconds via voice call is slowed to a ten minute button frenzy, sans the subtleties of a phone conversation. But it got to the point where someone would send me a text and then act surprised when I called them instead of testing, or annoyed that I didn't message them back within minutes.

So even though I now send the occasional text, I'm still with Sen. Lasee when it comes to the whole phenomenon, though I'm not nearly as crotchety about it as he is yet. "My attitude is, if you want to talk to somebody, it’s bad enough to talk on the cell phone," Lasee told me.

Neither Lasee nor I take it as a personal affront when someone texts in our immediate vicinity, but I find it just as alarming as he does to see someone cruising down the interstate at 75 miles an hour, eyes down, phone up, keys a'clicking. That's why Lasee has been a leader in the state legislature in pushing for a texting while driving ban in the state of Wisconsin.

Early in the text message era, when I had maybe a grand total of half a dozen text messages under my belt PERIOD, I chanced to visit St. Louis with my buddy Clinton in our most recent blitzkrieg tour of the Midwest. We stayed with a friend of his there, who was an all around decent guy, and was even good enough to drive us around the city.

Yet after a near miss on the outbound I-55 while the guy was literally engaged in a full-out text message conversation with his girlfriend, I opted to drive myself for the rest of the trip. Maybe I'm high-strung, but just riding with the guy was a white-knuckled experience as I spent more time watching the road than he did.

I guess I'm just not talented enough to safely drive and text... I wouldn't know, actually, because I've never worked up the nerve to try it - and I'm the guy who once perfected the art of downshifting around a corner while talking on a cell phone, eating a taco and balancing a Big Gulp on the steering wheel.

But at the beginning of the month, our simple neighbors to the northwest took one small step for a legislative body, but one giant leap for safety's sake...and this may be the first time I've EVER advocated something "for safety's sake." Minnesota's texting while driving ban went into effect August 1, meaning they beat us at something for the first time EVER.

This is in spite of Sen. Lasee's best efforts to push a similar ban through our state legislature during the last session, which, in his defense, wasn't exactly noted as their most productive session ever. But Lasee says the leadership in both the Republican-controlled Assembly and the Democrat-controlled Senate wanted nothing to do with a texting while driving ban - and he has some good theories as to why.

"There’s support there, on both sides," he said. "It’s just the leadership doesn’t want to deal with it. I think they do it. They text message and drive."

And while I couldn't get Lasee to name names, he promised me he will bring the issue back up during the next session. Which is good, because until there's a law against it, I'm just going to sound like a prematurely aged old coot every time I rave about someone I see committing what I consider to be a more heinous offense than speeding in a school zone.

Now get the hell off my lawn!

...PS...This post hasn't been proofed yet, because I'm told this coffee shop is closing in two minutes. I'm about to enter my second week without an internet connection. I will continue posting this week via work and coffee shops, and then it's off to Canada for a week. After that, I'll consider getting my own internets again. Thanks for bearing with me.